


Hush

by powerandpathos



Category: 19天 - Old先 | 19 Days - Old Xian
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Anal Sex, Angst, Blow Jobs, F/M, Fingering, Implied/Referenced Underage Prostitution, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, M/M, Past Sexual Abuse, Semi-Public Blow Jobs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-25
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-27 00:19:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8380123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/powerandpathos/pseuds/powerandpathos
Summary: He Tian sees something he shouldn’t, and something he almost wishes he hasn’t. He’s never been a very good knight in shining armour.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there! I am re-posting this work from my Tumblr account for accessibility and as a back-up, so for this reason I won't be replying to comments on AO3. If you want to come talk to me, I would so so love that. You can find me over at thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/ Enjoy! x

It’s hot in the classroom: sticky-heat hot. The windows are open and the air is still and the teacher has turned on the fan that does nothing but thrum and make clacking sounds. It’s a backdrop to the sound of paper sheets turning. Of pens scratching. Of sighing and feet scuffing into the floor.

Spines are curved over desks, and hair is falling into faces, and He Tian is slumped in his chair and he’s just watching, pen spinning between his fingers so fast it’s a blur.

Some of them have their cheeks almost pressed to the paper, glasses pressed against the desk. Some have straight-backs and jittering legs. Some, like Mo Guan Shan, have their hair in knots in their hand, lips bitten, pens moving across the page in an awkward, uncertain jerk. It’s a look that belongs to the struggling and the haven’t-revised’s. And it’s so at odds with He Tian, his slouch and expression that is soft and almost lazy, that the difference is almost jarring

But He Tian can’t help notice that Guan Shan’s is a unique look that belongs to the desperate, that he’s leaning so far over that his shirt has ridden up out the back of his black trousers, flash of pale skin a distraction, a mirage that He Tian is trying to make some sense of.

His pen clatters, for the third time, onto the floor.

It earns him a cast of annoyed glances – Guan Shan tenses at the sound but, otherwise, does nothing – and the teacher is staring at him. He Tian picks it up, and the teacher’s shoes are clacking onto the floor, and when he leans back in his chair she’s folding her arms beside his desk.

‘Is something the matter, He Tian?’ she asks, voice quiet even though everyone can hear it in the silence. Can hear it and is trying not to because the exams are more important than what he has to say for once.

‘The matter?’

‘Your paper is empty.’

He looks at it. So it is. ‘Yes,’ he says.

‘Are you having difficulty with the questions?’

‘No,’ he says.

She’s looking at him like she doesn’t understand. Like she’s disappointed, a small apostrophe between her thick brows.

‘See me after,’ is all she says, and heads back to the front of the room, shoes clicking.

He doesn’t, actually, see her after, because Bi Wenling’s asked him if he wants to go for a drink in the city and he says yes. He doesn’t see the teacher after because it doesn’t matter what her concerns are. He doesn’t see her after because his uncle offered him a job last month for when he finishes high school, and he’s said yes to that too.

‘Just pass,’ his uncle says, when he asks if there are grade requirements. ‘And don’t look like a total fuck up.’

Not looking like a total fuck up, to be exact, means that he can pass some exams and choose to fail others. He tries hard in the ones he likes, doesn’t turn the paper in the ones he doesn’t, and knows he’ll end up with a comfortable average that puts him in place with every other mid-level student in the city.

‘You’ll regret it,’ Zhengxi tells him, tone omniscient and foreboding.

But Zhengxi’s too practical sometimes so He Tian gives him the finger and knows that not getting an A in Philosophy and Ethics is not, in fact, something he is going to regret when he’s in his twenties and earning a salary that would make most people’s eyes water. At least, that’s what his uncle has promised him, and he tends to be pretty good on his promises, so He Tian doesn’t mind banking on the unknown.

He’s in a taxi by eight o’clock, and it smells of the girls’ perfume and flavoured lipgloss and Huo Qi’s aftershave. It smells of vodka because they’re sneaking sips out of micro bottles from the girls’ clutch bags, and the driver is passing them irritated glances because he’s a driver not a barman.

‘Li Lao Shi’s gonna have it in for you tomorrow,’ Huo Qi says, leaning across the seat and passing him the bottle.

He Tian takes a swig, can taste ethanol and the remnant’s of the girls’ coconut-flavoured lips that taste like rum, and he knows that they’re watching the way his throat works as he swallows, and it’s a heady, lustful thing that makes Huo Qi’s eyes darkens and the Bi Ten bites her lip.

He passes the bottle to Bi Wenling, and she’s smiling as she raises it to her own lips.

‘Li Lao Shi can go fuck herself,’ He Tian says. Puts the emphasis on the _fuck_ , and the girls squeal in awful delight.

Huo Qi laughs. ‘Can’t all be as secure as you, He Tian,’ he says easily. ‘Some of us have to try.’

He Tian shrugs, because there’s something behind the words. Something that reeks of jealousy and something that’s bitter, and it’s just as rich as the hitched laughter. He Tian can’t care, because it’s not _his_ fault that some things work in his favour. Not his fault that some people don’t have what he has. Zhengxi used to tell him that he should feel more. When Jian Yi went and he didn’t really feel anything. But he told Zhengxi that feeling wasn’t going to bring him back. And for a while, after that, they hadn’t spoken.

They slip between traffic now and miss red lights and the taxi jerks occasionally, too hard on the steering, too stiff on the breaks, and Shanghai’s slipping past them and through them as the sun is setting and the the city starts to change and light up around them, and soon they’re in the belly of the beast. He Tian hands over a wad of cash – keep the change – and they climb out on trembling legs and eyes that roll back for a second because they’d drunk too much too quickly.

‘Fuck, it’s cold,’ Wenling says, pulling her dress down from where it’s hiked up around her thighs. He Tian catches a glimpse of a white thong when she yanks down the fabric. It looks nice. And he nearly tells her. Imagines the way she’d choke and Huo Qi would give him that wild sort of look that said he couldn’t _say_ things like that to girls and wishing almost that he could say it himself.

It’s not, actually. Cold. The summer night is hot and the sky’s a hazy, setting pink of a sinking sun, and most people in the bar, standing outside smoking a cigarette, passing them on the street, are wearing t-shirts and shorts and thin jackets.

It’s busy when they walk inside: men finishing work in suits with jackets folded over their arms, groups of teens and twenty-somethings finishing school or university for the day, women starting out on a hen night. There’s music thrumming through the speakers, low and heavy and all bass, and Wenling and Bi Ten find an empty while He Tian and Huo Qi get a round of shots, a few bottles of beer and some colourful cocktails. There’s a mirror behind the bar, and He Tian catches his reflection in it as he swipes his card. He think he looks like his father.

‘You’re the best,’ Wenling says as they carry them over, red lips parting.

‘You can get the next round,’ he tells her, handing her a cocktail and a couple of shots that smell like mouthwash. Doesn’t mean it, because a couple of drinks don’t make a thumb-print dent in his savings account.

They sit and drink and talk about school and exams because it’s easy, and then the conversation turns to _after_ , which is harder, but they know they’ve got two weeks left and they probably won’t see each other again once school finishes in. Different social circles. Different aspirations. Knowing that they’ve never really been that close anyway and it was easy to be friends with each other when no one else would. He Tian too sharp, too much, Wenling too much of a gleam in her eye, Huo Qi too eager for the drink and the drugs, Bi Ten too much like all of them and not enough of herself. Alone they were imposing and weirdly dangerous – weirdly other – together they were impossible and suffocating to anyone who was not them.

‘I applied for an internship,’ Wenling says, when Huo Qi asks her what she’ll be doing. After. ‘I’m still waiting to hear.’

‘If you don’t get it?’

‘Apply to some others. Get a job.’

Huo Qi sighs. ‘I wish I had it that easy.’

Bi Ten’s look is flat as she moves a straw through her mojito. ‘You do,’ she says. ‘Stop pretending like you’re not your daddy’s little rich boy.’

Huo Qi flushes under the light, red and glowing. It’s dark out now, and the lights have been dimmed in the bar, and the cigarette smoke and the smell of liquor has started to draw the place into some quiet, shadowed part of the night.

‘At least my father cares,’ Huo Qi mutters.

It’s a jibe to He Tian. They all know it. Cast him a nervous glance. A waiting glance. He’s too unpredictable.

‘Lucky you,’ is all he says, knows his eyes are too still as he downs another shot and he’s not made a joke that they can laugh at.

Huo Qi gets up to go to the bathroom, because he can never handle the confrontation once he’s started it. The girls started talking about him, like He Tian’s not sitting there, and it’s an unconscious thing when he pulls his phone out.

 _What are you doing?_ he types.

He takes a swig of his beer, swallows slowly when he a text slides through.

_im busy_

He Tian bites his cheek. _Doing what?_

_none of your business_

_I’m having a drink with Wenling._

_good for you?_

_Come join._

_and be a part of your trust fund group? no thanks_

He snorts at this, and Wenling throws him a look.

‘What?’ she says.

‘Nothing.’

Huo Qi comes back eventually, sliding into the booth. His face is wet and pale and He Tian’s staring at him.

‘You missed a spot,’ He Tian says.

Huo Qi looks at him, startled, and wipes his arm across his nose, checks his reflection in the back of his phone.

‘Thanks for the invite,’ Bi Ten says to him, annoyed.

‘I only had enough for one go.’

‘Sure.’

He Tian is staring at his phone while they talk. It doesn’t light up again. He feels, suddenly, a little empty.

He rises to his feet. ‘I’m going for a smoke.’

‘I’ll come,’ Wenling says, and it’s almost a question.

He shrugs. ‘If you want.’

They go out the back of the bar, because the front is always busy and the music’s too loud. Outside it’s just an alleyway, empty and hot with steam from the kitchen and the smell of grease and rubbish bins that gets disguised under menthol cigarettes. He lights up for Wenling, and leans against the wall of the building with a foot against the brick.

‘Model pose,’ she says, an arm wrapped around herself. She holds her cigarette like she’s in some French indie film.

He rolls his eyes at her. ‘Whatever,’ he says.

She takes another drag, blows the smoke away from them both, and he sees that she’s biting her lip, red lipstick on her teeth, gloss left on glass rims. He wonders if her lips will still taste like coconut.

He thinks he knows what’s coming, because she’s sultry in a movie-star kind of way that makes most of the boys talk about _fucking_ her rather than talking about having sex with her, and she’s never learnt that part of the appeal is not showing all you’ve got.

She says, ‘I can’t believe it’s all going to be over in two weeks.’

He says, ‘I can.’

Her sigh is loud. ‘Would it kill you be fucking sentimental for once, He Tian?’

‘Probably.’ He’s never really tried it. Not with her.

‘It makes you fucking difficult to like.’

 _I didn’t ask you to like me_ , he almost says. But it’s too similar. Too familiar. And he doesn’t want to give her that feeling that he only wanted to keep for someone else.

Instead, he shrugs. ‘Do you want my jacket?’ he says, because it’s getting cooler now, and her dress is short, and maybe the arm wrapped around herself is not a defence wholly against him.

She hesitates, for a moment, and it makes her look young, and that’s what makes He Tian’s heart kind of ache for her. And then she nods, slides her arms into it while he holds her cigarette. She breathes in the smell on the collar, and he wonders what it’s like. Nearly asks her to tell him.

‘Why are you so different than you were in middle school?’ she says, quietly.

He passes her cigarette back. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You used to be so much… easier.’

‘Easier?’

‘You used to laugh more.’

‘I don’t think you’re remembering me very well,’ he remarks.

‘I used to ask you the stupidest shit and you’d indulge me,’ she continues. ‘And you’d tell me like you were telling me a secret. Like I was the only one that knew out of five other girls.’

He knows what she’s talking about, distantly. Remembers how they used to stop him in the corridor and ask if he’d walk them to class, and how he’d said yes. (Why had he said yes?) Remembers the way he’d lean back in his chair and when the bell rang they’d all gather around his desk like moths to a flame that was neither bright nor warm, and he’d enjoyed it as much as been puzzled by it. Puzzled, more, when people saw through it. Whatever _it_ was.

He flicks ash away, embers dying on the ground. ‘And now?’ he asks her.

‘And now I feel like you’re telling people secrets that they’re not supposed to know.’

‘That’s interesting,’ he says.

‘No, it’s not,’ she sighs. ‘You don’t really give a shit about me.’

‘I gave you my jacket.’

‘Of course you did,’ she says, rolling her eyes.

He’s not sure what he’s supposed to make of that, but he’s also not sure if he can be bothered to work it out. Because it’s like she kept reminding them: two weeks. And they were counting down. And suddenly everything either meant everything or nothing – you gave it your all or you didn’t give it anything. And He Tian was finding that it was remarkably easy to give it nothing.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says. He doesn’t know what he’s apologising for.

Apparently, neither does she, and she gives him a strange look.

‘I’m going back in,’ she says. She waits for a moment, like she expects him to join her, but instead he lights up another cigarette and nods.

It’s quiet when she leaves. The vents from the kitchen have shut off because they’ve stopped serving food. He can hear the kitchen staff talking to each other and the clatter of plates through the service door along the alley. He can hear the cars passing on the street, windows down, music loud, late-night summer vibes riding the airwaves that are sticky and wet and hot and can’t quite reach him when he’s standing in the shadows.

He brings his phone out again and swipes through the last couple of texts. He’s done it before, scrolling through the phone when he can’t sleep. When he’s waiting for his turn as he sits on the side of the court during a basketball game. When he’s in class and can see Guan Shan and is trying to piece the words on the screen to his mouth and wondering what expression he would have made. If he ever smiles when he gets anything from He Tian. If he’s really devoid of anything for him.

He slips his phone back into the pocket of his jeans and smokes slowly, makes rings, lets it fill him up until the menthol makes his lungs feel cold. Doesn’t want to have to go back in and listen to Huo Qi’s barbed words and get looks from Wenling like she’s expecting something from him.

He’s nearly finished when the door opens a little way down the alley. It’s the door to the staff entrance, and He Tian ducks into the alcove of his own doorframe as two figures emerge.

‘Can’t wait to get you to mine,’ a voice mutters, and it’s a low sound, a dark sound, and He Tian can’t help but listen.

Whoever he’s with doesn’t reply, and He Tian leans forward, toes barely edging past the shade of the alcove, peering around the wall. There’s a guy, tall and well-built, and his frame almost hides the other guy he’s pressing into the wall. He Tian thinks he should be shocked that it’s another guy, but instead he takes a drag and watches as hands press into the tall guy’s biceps as he’s closed in, as the guy presses his mouth against a neck and a mouth parts and a head rolls against the brick until He Tian can see his face and—

He Tian stills.

Even in the dark it’s undeniable.

Even in the dark he’d know those lips. Knows that red hair. Know the way his eyes screw up against things that are real and in front of him and undeniably there, like closing his eyes was all he could do.

The cigarette is growing ashy between He Tian’s fingers, and he’s frozen as the guy works his way up Guan Shan’s throat, as he presses kisses into his cheekbones before they find his lips. As he leans in closer and presses his knee between Guan Shan’s thighs and He Tian shouldn’t be _watching_ this. Shouldn’t.

And he wonders if this is what Guan Shan meant when he said he was busy. Knows on some vague level of awareness that he should be grateful that he wasn’t lying, that it would be the guy thing to cheer him on, but instead he can’t move and he can only watch and feel something funny happen in his chest.

And after a while Guan Shan shakes his head, because one of the guy’s hands is working its way beneath the waistline of Guan Shan’s jeans, and his other hand is pinning Guan Shan’s wrists to the wall above his head, and he looks so _small_. For a moment He Tian wonders if he should do something, but Guan Shan’s not struggling, not bucking against him, not swinging fists like he did in middle school.

And he whispers, ‘You can’t,’ and He Tian nearly misses it over the sound of a car door slamming down on the street.

‘Your uncle said I could,’ the guy says, and it’s a murmur into Guan Shan’s throat.

‘He’s not my uncle.’ And then: ‘You just need to pay me first.’

He Tian thinks he’s misheard him. Thinks he’s got it wrong. That he’s seeing it wrong. Because the feeling in his throat is too tight now and the cigarette has fallen onto the floor and it _can’t_ be. It can’t be. He wouldn’t.  

_Just because you have money you think you can use me._

He Tian thinks he is going to be sick.

‘The cash is on my dresser,’ the guy is saying.

‘Then we should probably go there and finish what you started.’

The guy makes a sound between a gasp and a guttural grown that echoes off the walls, and He Tian doesn’t need to watch anymore to know what Guan Shan did. Can imagine it even has he backs into the alcove, presses his head against the door, like it can open and pull him into something dark and cool and unending and silent.

He hears the footsteps after a minute, and they’re close, and there’s nothing he can do but hold himself so _still._ A shadow passes, and they’re near enough for He Tian to reach out and touch the guy’s jacket if he wants, to pull his hands away from where it’s tucked into Guan Shan’s back pocket, and he thinks they haven’t seen him.

He let’s out a sigh, and it’s quiet, but of course – of course – Guan Shan hears it.

For a second he looks at where He Tian’s standing like his mind can’t make up the pieces of what his eyes are seeing, blank, flat gaze; slack expression.

And then – then his eyes widen, barely, and his lips part, and he stumbles.

And He Tian wants to say something, but doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say, so he doesn’t, and the guy doesn’t notice the exchange and he’s keeping Guan Shan moving and then they’re gone. Out onto the street. Car doors slamming, tires screeching as they pull away.

The engine fills He Tian’s head, and his heart is thumping in his throat, and for a while the deep, building roar of it is all he can hear.


	2. Chapter 2

His heart is still hammering in his chest when he goes back into the bar. It’s full now, and there’s a murky drunkenness sliding about the night, and He Tian thinks distantly that he has another exam in the morning on European Politics.

Wenling has her arms crossed when he returns, back straight against the studded leather seating of the booth; there’s an insouciant look on her face when she looks at him, and it comes with a question.

_Where have you been?_

Huo Qi has his hand somewhere between Bi Ten’s thighs, and He Tian knows if he looked into her eyes he’d see blown pupils and wet lashes.

‘I want to go,’ Wenling says, looking stiff and unimpressed. It’s hot inside, but she’s wearing his jacket.

‘All right,’ says He Tian.

He Tian pays the tab at the bar, and they leave the other two there. He used to bring them all back to his once, but listening to them have bad sex grew irritating, and one or both of them usually threw up at some point in the night and didn’t quite reach the bathroom. It’s easier now, he’s learned to leave them there.

They get a taxi back to his by midnight, and He Tian fries some rice for Wenling while she finds one of his shirts and wipes off her makeup.

‘I wish they wouldn’t get so fucked up,’ she says, pulling herself onto a bar stool. She rests her chin in her hand, lets her long legs swing. In a better mood, He Tian might have admired the length of them. The softness of them. ‘It’s so boring.’

‘Yeah,’ He Tian says, but he’s thinking that maybe they had the right idea once in a while. He sets a bowl in front of her, and wanders over to the long windows of the apartment. It’s familiar now to lean his long frame against the wall, to light up a cigarette and watch the hot heat of the city crawl in the darkness. But now he wonders if he can see that guy’s apartment from here. Wonders if he could see them pressed against the glass.

He Tian swallows and presses a finger and thumb to the bridge between his eyes. He hasn’t had much to drink, but the headache is starting to prick at the back of his head.

He hears something shift, and Wenling is standing, leaning against the kitchen isle, and she’s watching him. He realises he must have been standing there for a while.

‘What is it?’ she says.

He thinks about telling her. Tries to imagine her reaction, unfurling like a flower across her pretty face. Because it is pretty when the red lipstick goes, when her lashes aren’t dark and heavy and her eyes are darker. He thinks about telling her because she already sort of knows. Had been the one to stand across the basketball court and see what had happened only, really, in a handful of seconds. And it was only after that he realised, looked across and saw the way her hand was fisted to her chest, lips parted, frozen.

_I won’t tell. I swear. I promise I won’t tell._

‘It’s nothing,’ he says now. He moves towards her, nods at the half-empty bowl of rice. ‘Are you done?’

‘What is it?’ she says again.

‘It’s nothing.’

She opens her mouth.

‘Wenling. Leave it.’

Her mouth closes. There’s a small line between her brows.

‘Fine,’ she says. She stalks over to the bed with about as much suffusing anger as one could emanate wearing only a long shirt that brushed the back of her thighs and on legs that are trembling from the aftershocks of too much liquor.

He Tian watches her go, long dark hair hitting the back of her waist. The way her hips sway. He almost sighs. He can’t deal with that right now.

He cleans up behind her, puts her dress on a hanger over the frame of a door and the bowl in the dishwasher. He brushes his teeth in the bathroom and doesn’t turn on the light so his reflection is murky darkness. He sets down a glass of water on the stack of books and magazines that serves as a bedside table. She turns a lamp on; he turns the lights off.

He knows she’s watching as he strips off his shirt, watching the curve of his spine, the taper of his waist. Knows her eyes are on his ass as he unbuttons his jeans and throws it all into a pile in the corner of the room, frame backlit by the lamp, casting shadows on the wall behind the bed.

He climbs into the bed. It’s big enough that they don’t touch unless she reaches out an arm. Which she does. Presses a hand against his shoulder blade. It’s warm.

‘Don’t,’ he says, and there’s a moment where he thinks she might ignore him, and a moment where he wonders if he wants her to.

But then she takes it off. And there’s a moment of suspended silence, something hanging in it.

He hears her sigh, turn the lamp off, and he knows she’s facing away from him, and he doesn’t really care.

He squeezes his eyes shut for a minute, but they always open, always fall on the windows – further. Sometimes he can see his reflection in the glass, see his dark eyes staring back at him until they’re too tired to keep open. Sometimes he thinks there’s a smile on his lips that he can’t feel on his mouth. But usually he’s looking out and wondering if there’s anyone out there who feels like he does.

The lump is back in his throat now, and when he swallows it doesn’t go, and he can only think about the way his head was against the wall, frame closed in by a stranger. The way he seemed used to it. Wasn’t startled. Knew what to say.

And then those words. On his tongue. In his voice.

_You just need to pay me first._

He Tian presses his head harder into the pillow.

 _Why?_ he wants to ask him. _Why would you do it?_ Couldn’t He Tian have given him something? Couldn’t he have helped him before it got to that? When did it _get_ to that, and had it always been that way? Has He Tian always, quietly, known, and not wanted to acknowledge it? He wonders if he’s  missing something. Wonders, with a bizarre desperation that he can’t explain that later he realises must be hope, if it was a one-time thing.

He thinks about the kiss. How he took it from him. About Guan Shan’s reaction. After.

He feels sick.

His eyes don’t grow tired, even when the lights grow blurry in front of him and he can’t make out shapes anymore. He doesn’t sleep.

* * *

They have school the next morning, and it’s easy to get up when his eyes haven’t closed. His head feels heavy and full, and his throat is dry. He feels faintly nauseous, and he knows it’s not just from the lack of sleep, or from the alcohol.

Wenling makes congee with sultanas and cinnamon, and he sips at a glass of cold water. Outside the sky is a haze of cloudless grey-blue heat. The air conditioning in He Tian’s apartment is blowing cool, bringing goose-bumps across his skin, but he can already imagine the prickling warmth on the back of his neck as he looks out the window.

They get to school late, dropping by Wenling’s apartment for her uniform, and as He Tian walks through the gates he remembers that it’s _less_ than two weeks now, and for some reason it makes him feel strange, makes him feel like there’s a time limit on everything now. A deadline that he needs to chase before he reaches the end.  

He thinks, quietly, that maybe it’s because he won’t have this after. Someone warm beside him in his bed, liquor that gives everything a glow, breakfast waiting for him when he gets out the shower. But he thinks that it’s probably not it.

‘See you later,’ he tells Wenling, fingertips brushing her hand, and it brings a small smile to her face that isn’t wide but is enough.

When he gets to his classroom Guan Shan’s desk is empty; He Tian’s eyes are drawn to it automatically. It shouldn’t surprise him; Guan Shan’s usually late.

He sets his bag down beneath his desk and loosens the collar around his throat, cracking open the window next to the desk. Already it’s growing warm, shirt pressing to his back. He looks up as Huo Qi wanders into the classroom. He looks surprisingly fresh, neatly-dressed. His hair is still wet from a shower.

‘Morning,’ he says, sliding into the seat beside He Tian with a wince, and He Tian realises that it’s a carefully crafted illusion.

He Tian gives him a dry, amused look. ‘Good morning,’ he says. ‘Sleep well?’

‘I’ve had better nights,’ Huo Qi says, cracking the lid on a water bottle. He drinks half of it, throat working, plastic creaking as it empties, and then puts it down on the desk with a sigh. ‘You two left early.’

‘You weren’t much company.’

‘Ouch,’ Huo Qi says. And then, ‘Did you fuck her?’

He Tian doesn’t say anything to this, and feels himself sighing. It’s a weary thing that comes out from somewhere deep.

‘I’ll take that as a no,’ Huo Qi says, but it’s listed at the end. A question.

‘If you want,’ He Tian says.

Huo Qi makes a small sound of disappointment, kicking his legs out in front of him. He’s not as tall as He Tian, not as careless, so it makes him look stiff. He Tian wonders what else he and Bi Ten did last night.

He almost asks, but he’s not really that interested in the way Huo Qi is about sex, and it’s then that Guan Shan walks in.

He Tian doesn’t know why, but he feels like something should happen. Feels like everything should stop as he puts his bag down and sits down like nothing’s different. He feels like, somehow, everyone should know what he saw.

But no one moves, or looks at him, or stops talking about how they were revising until three o’clock in the morning, and it’s like He Tian is the only one that notices him.

And it’s always been like that, really. Always been his heart that kind of hitches, eyes that latch themselves onto his lean frame, red hair a beacon, when no one else spares him a glance.

But this time is different. He knows it’s different. And Guan Shan hasn’t even looked at him. Didn’t even lift his eyes when he walked in. And now his back is to He Tian, and he’s low in his seat, fingers trailing over the surface of the desk, nails bumping over the grooves in the wood, like nothing’s different.

He Tian watches him. Until the bell rings. Until Huo Qi realises He Tian’s not listening to him anymore. Until Li Lao Shi walks in and puts the papers on the desks. She gives He Tian a pointed look.

And this is one of the exams he’s revised for. One he needs to get an average.

It takes him a long time to turn the paper.

* * *

He corners him by one of the outdoor sinks when the bell rings for lunch, beneath the shade of a pagoda tree. There’s water running down the back of Guan Shan’s neck, and his spine is curved as he leans in, lips wet. His skin would be warm to touch. He Tian wants to touch him.

He holds himself still. Knows that his shadow is on the wall behind the sink. Knows that Guan Shan knows.  

Guan Shan stills, for a moment, before standing straight. He wipes his arm cross his lips, leaving a wet trail on the fine hairs of his arm, and then he turns.

Whatever look He Tian was expecting, it wasn’t this, and he feels it in his throat.

His eyes are low, and hooded, but they’re burning beneath his lashes. His lips are pressed together, still glistening from the water, and a muscle jumps in his jaw that draws He Tian’s eyes to it. His fists, He Tian notices, are clenched at his sides.

He Tian knows this look: It’s a challenge.

‘Go on then,’ Guan Shan says.

His voice makes He Tian blink, hard and low, and it trails on the edges of anger – of danger – but it doesn’t quite get there. Doesn’t because there’s something tight at the corners of his eyes, and his jaw is clenching too tight, and, so faintly, there’s a tremor to him. A slight shake that makes the edges of him blur.

‘Why are you doing it?’ He Tian says. He could have asked something else, but his head’s too full. He needs something that makes sense.

Guan Shan doesn’t laugh at him. But his expression turns incredulous, and it’s like he’s laughing.

‘Why do you think?’ he says.

‘How long?’

‘How long do you think?’

He Tian bites his cheek. ‘Are you going to answer me anything?’

‘I’m not sure you know what you’re asking.’

 _I do_ , He Tian nearly says. But it’s reflex. Reaction. _Do I?_

He watches as Guan Shan loosens. He leans his back against the sink. Folders his arms, even if his hands are still fisted. It’s like he’s understood something in He Tian, like something has made sense. Like he can put his defences down. Like he’s waiting.

He Tian says, ‘Tell me it wasn’t what I thought it was.’

‘It was exactly what you thought it was.’

He Tian hears the sound come from him. It’s a frustrated thing. An angry thing. A choked thing. He turns so he can run a hand through his hair, let his fingers tighten for a moment so his scalp is burning at the pull.

Guan Shan is watching him when he turns back, like he’s some kind of curious creature, some animal, and He Tian hates it.

‘You could have come to me,’ he says. His words sound flat in the dry heat. ‘You could have—I would have helped you. You know—’

‘Don’t you fucking dare.’

He Tian falls silent. Guan Shan’s face has twisted instantly into something like disgust. Like He Tian is disgusting him. Like there’s acid on his tongue.

‘You think I want your help?’ he says. ‘You think I need it? How dare you.’

‘Guan Shan—’

‘You think that just because I do that—’ He Tian thinks it’s strange he doesn’t call it by it’s name. ‘—that I need help? That I’m lost? That I’m fucking confused?’

He Tian doesn’t know what to say. ‘Aren’t you?’

Guan Shan stands up straight, moves forward. He’s not slouching anymore. His face is so close, and He Tian almost leans back, but Guan Shan’s warm breath is on his throat, and his eyes are so dark when he looks up to meet his own.

‘I wanted this,’ Guan Shan tells him, slowly, and He Tian can’t breathe. ‘I wanted it. I suck cock to pay for my college fees after high school finishes and I _like_ it. So stop with your—your elitist bullshit and get off your fucking high horse. Not everyone wants to be saved.’

He Tian doesn’t move—can’t move. His hands are limp at his sides and it would be easy to touch him. He hates that, this close, when there’s acid dripping from Guan Shan’s voice and he’s looking at him like that, that he thinks about kissing him.

And it revolts him. Because it’s like, now, he’s seeing him like something that is there to kiss. Because he can. Because if someone pays him they can have anything they want. That he’s disposable. That he’s for sale.

It’s like he knows, like he can see everything He Tian thinks, because his eyes tighten, lips press together hard, and he’s pushing past him—

And He Tian’s hand is wrapped around his wrist. Not tight. Barely a press of his fingertips. But it stops Guan Shan, and he goes still, and He Tian can hear his breathing. It’s heavy.

He Tian’s head is lowered and he says, ‘Are you going to spend the rest of your life on your knees?’

His cheek is burning before he even finishes the question, and he knows the flat palm of Guan Shan’s hand must be stinging. His face is ashen, face fallen slack like he doesn’t know what to say anymore.

‘Are you going to realise that you’re more than just flesh and a hole to fuck?’

Guan Shan is staring at him. He Tian can’t stop.

‘Are you going to let anyone stick their cock in you if they pay enough?’

‘Stop it.’

‘Sit in your lectures in college and know that you swallowed someone’s come so you could be there?’

‘ _Stop it_.’

‘Maybe you let someone go bareback so you could hand in your fucking coursework—’

‘ _I said_ _stop it_.’

He Tian looks at him, levelled, even though his chest aches. Guan Shan is even paler, and his chest is rising and falling low and fast. He looks like he wants to hit him again. Like he can’t.

‘Is it bothering you?’ He Tian says. ‘I thought you wanted it.’

The words lie somewhere between them, and a breeze slips through, brushing the leaves of the tree above them. Light leaks between the leaves, and shadows fracture across Guan Shan’s face with the disturbance.

‘You don’t know anything,’ he whispers, shallow. ‘You don’t get it.’

_Then tell me. Make me understand._

It would be a selfish thing to say it, because it’s about him. Not, really, about Guan Shan at all. And he wonders if this whole thing is about him. About his own fucking complex. But he doesn’t care. Thinks about hands beneath Guan Shan’s shirt and beneath his waistband and the way he’d cry out and couldn’t say stop because there’s a few thousand yuan on the dresser.

And it stops him short. Makes his mind go still. Because he’s put a price on him, already. _How much for a blowjob?_ some part of him is saying. _Is it extra if he swallows?_ He can feel himself shake at the thought. Hates that it’s something he’d think of. Hates it.

‘Yeah,’ Guan Shan says. And He Tian looks at him. There’s the trace of a smile on his lips, a cruel thing. He’s looking at He Tian like he _knows_. ‘You want to _help_ me,’ he says, echoing He Tian’s words.

‘Guan Shan—’

‘Don’t even think about it.’

He’s gone before He Tian can say anything else, and He Tian has to stand there for a while. Has to stand there before he stumbles forward and his fingers are biting into the concrete edges of the sink. He can’t stand the heat. Can’t stand the way it’s prickling across his skin. He turns on the tap and lets the water run over his head, lets it run down the back of his shirt until it’s soaked. He keeps his eyes open, lashes caught with water drops, and everything is blurred.

_Don’t even think about it._

He can’t think about anything else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted here: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/151887099629/hush-26


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted here: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/151958229864/hush-36

Time, as it is wont to do, passes. A whole week goes by, until the weekend is upon him, and he’s had less than ten hours’ sleep. It makes things difficult.

He spends Saturday reading. Watches documentaries and digs out newspaper articles and downloads journal articles. He wonders if he’s doing this for himself or for Guan Shan.

He learns, apparently, that it’s common. That, apparently, there are thousands just like him in Shanghai. That, apparently, one client a day is good. That, sometimes, there are more. He learns that for some people it’s part-time. That often there’s violence. That sometimes they’re forced not to wear a condom. That someone can earn 70,000 in a good month. There are a lot of statistics.

He Tian’s uncle pays that much for the apartment.

Eventually He Tian has to stop. And again, he thinks it’s probably for his sake more than Guan Shan’s.

Guan Shan. Christ. He laughs to himself when he’s highlighting an article. Highlighting it. _Who would have thought?_ he thinks.

On Sunday he meets Zhengxi. He looks tired and worn, a drifter, looks constantly like he’s either just woken up or hasn’t slept in weeks; he’s looked like that since Jian Yi left.

They go to a tea house café in the old town, old-style prints on the panelled walls, lanterns hanging from the ceiling, mats on the floor that are soft and worn to sit on. Inside it smells of roses and something earthy, and He Tian thinks he should probably feel calmer.

Zhengxi gets a pot of jasmine tea; He Tian gets white tea. They, both, don’t drink much of it.

‘Passing any of your exams?’ Zhengxi asks him. He’s not so interested, but He Tian thinks it’s good to let him talk. Even when Jian Yi was here he was too quiet. Lurked. Filled the space behind Jian Yi like a second shadow.

‘Some,’ He Tian tells him. ‘I start with my uncle in August.’

‘Lucky,’ Zhengxi says. He sounds like Huo Qi.

‘If you want to call it that,’ He Tian says. ‘Have you decided?’

‘Decided?’

‘What you’ll be doing.’

‘My dad wants me to do military service for a month. After that… I don’t know.’

He Tian is… surprised. ‘People still do that?’

‘Well my dad’s a cop, so… He thinks it’s character building.’

He Tian hides a smile behind the rip of his cup. He’s trying to imagine Zhengxi running the drills. He thinks he’ll be fine.

‘I didn’t know,’ He Tian says.

‘About?’

‘That your dad was in the PAP.’

‘Why would you?’

He Tian gives him that. He’s never, really, known much about Zhengxi. And it wasn’t like it was necessary to know. Jian Yi was always the interesting one. But now He Tian finds the absence of Jian Yi intriguing in Zhengxi. Who is Zhengxi now? He Tian thinks that he’s interested, perhaps, in finding out.

The waitress comes over and refills their cups. It’s quiet in here, and they keep their voices at helpless, quiet murmurs.

He Tian asks, ‘Have they found anything new?’

Zhengxi shakes his head. ‘Dad says they’re thinking of calling it off.’

It makes sense, now, why Zhengxi always knew things about the case that he shouldn’t. It’s still strange to call it a case. Knowing that Jian Yi is a Missing Person. That he has a crime reference number attached to him like a tag.

‘It’s been three years,’ says He Tian.

‘I know,’ says Zhengxi.

It’s heavy, and full of loss, and it pulls He Tian’s eyes and mouth down at the corners. Zhengxi has his head bowed a little, and it makes his eyes dark and unreadable. He Tian’s not sure how much anger is there now. How much hurt. He wonders if he’s resigned. If he’s accepting it.

But images flash through He Tian’s mind: Jian Yi jumping to be caught; a yellow lollipop, hands in Zhengxi’s hair; climbing over school fences.

He Tian’s not sure he would have accepted it. He knows himself, on some quiet level, that he hasn’t.

‘I’m not giving up,’ Zhengxi says.

‘You sound like you are.’

Zhengxi winces, and rewords: ‘I think he’ll come back. When he’s ready. When he can.’  

‘Okay,’ He Tian says. He puts his tea cup down, and leans back on his hands, legs crossed on the floor. ‘And what then? What if he’s not the person you knew?’

‘What?’

‘What if he’s not the person you thought he was? The one you wanted? What if he’s different and has _done_ things you didn’t—didn’t think he would.’

Zhengxi’s look is strange. ‘I… don’t think we’re talking about Jian Yi anymore.’

He Tian makes a quiet, huffed sound. Surprise. Frustration. Amusement. If he’d said it to Jian Yi, Jian Yi would never have noticed. Of course Zhengxi would have. All that quietness, that shadowing. Endless time spent reading people and their words. Even He Tian’s.

‘Maybe,’ He Tian says. He doesn’t say anything more.

Zhengxi looks at him. He Tian quirks a brow. Zhengxi sighs. They’re not going to talk about that. They’re going to talk, instead, about this:

‘No one can change that much,’ Zhengxi says. ‘And not him. He was… perpetual.’

‘Perpetual,’ says He Tian.

‘Sometimes I wanted him to be different. I love—I’m glad that he wasn’t.’

‘Despite everything?’

‘Despite everything.’ His words are strong, and hard, and they look right when they come from Zhengxi; his expression matches them. There’s a determination in them of which He Tian is… almost a little jealous.

It’s a look that he’s seen on Guan Shan’s face, and thinking of him now makes his stomach feel hollow.

‘This has been instructive,’ says He Tian.

It makes Zhengxi roll his eyes. ‘Instructive,’ he says. He pours himself another shallow cup from the glass cup, barely a mouthful. ‘Sure.’

* * *

On a basic level, he knows where he’s going, and he knows what he’s doing. On a higher level, he has no fucking clue.

It takes him an hour to walk across the old city to the newer, sprawling metropolis of glass and fast cars. Everything glitters in the high afternoon sun, skyscrapers alight, and He Tian feels like he’s burning by the time he gets there, sweat pricking at his forehead.

The bar looks different in the daylight, which isn’t surprising. When he gets there he can’t help glancing down the side of it. For a moment his heart skips, because he thinks—But no. It’s one of the kitchen boys hurling a bag of rubbish into the industrial bins next to the kitchen door. It slams shut with a sound like a gunshot, and He Tian can feel his heart in his throat.

Inside, it’s quiet. There are people having lunch beneath one of the TV screens, mostly tourists. There’s a group of twenty-somethings at the back pool table, laughter loud and ribald, and there are the men crouched over the bar, hair scraggly or gone, breath rancid, like they came with the place when the owner bought it.

‘What can I get you?’

He Tian realises he’s just standing there. He looks at the guy behind the bar; he’s tall, and attractive. His hair is gelled back, and he can’t be more than eighteen. He’s drying glasses with a starched white cloth, strong wrists fitting neatly into the base of a pint glass.

‘I’m looking for someone,’ He Tian says.

The guy flashes him a smile, dry and traced with something that’s like tiredness, and something that says he used to it. It’s not a smile He Tian is used to seeing. He says, ‘Aren’t we all?’

He Tian blinks. ‘A redhead,’ he says. ‘Your height. He said he was here Monday night.’

There’s a pause. And then the guy straightens up. Puts the glass down. He’s not embarrassed; instead he folds his arms, and the smile is chased out by a frown. He’s not languid and coy anymore.

Interesting.

‘Why are you looking for him?’ he says, and his voice has taken on a different tone, too.

 _Not a denial_ , He Tian thinks.

‘We’re in the same class,’ he says. ‘He asked me to drop some notes to his for an exam next week. Didn’t give me his address though.’

‘And you came here.’

‘He said he worked here.’

The guy stares at him. ‘He said he worked here.’

‘That’s right.’

There’s a pause. ‘Xie Xiaojian doesn’t work here.’

For a moment, He Tian doesn’t get what he’s saying. Thinks there’s been some gross misunderstanding. Some mistake. Until he does.

He Tian stares back and says, ‘I think we’ve confusing one another. I’m talking about Mo Guan Shan.’

The silence between them is heavy. One of the guys on the barstool slams down a glass and shouts something at the TV. At the end of the room, a mix of cheers and groans rises out from around the pool table. Someone’s just won. There’s the _fwip_ of the server door swinging, and it carries with it a waft that smells of grease and French fries and sweating meat.

What even made them come here last week? Who even chose to come here? He Tian can’t remember, but he doesn’t think it was him. Maybe Wenling had caught sight of a 2-4-1 cocktail advertisement.

 _What are the odds?_ he thinks.

Eventually, the silence approaches its end. The guy lets out a huffed breath. It’s a decisive kind of a sound.

‘He’s not here,’ he says. ‘He doesn’t… work here much.’

‘Have you got his address?’

‘I can’t give you that.’

He Tian shrugs. ‘All right. Guess he’ll just have to fail his exam.’

He Tian can see the words settling on him as he weighs them up. Sees the affect they have: the idea that Guan Shan might fail. That he could help him. The corners of his eyes tighten. Whoever he is, Guan Shan means something. He Tian doesn’t like it.

‘Fine,’ the guy grits out. ‘Wait here.’

He Tian waits. He makes a comment about the game on TV to the old guy nearest him, and it unleashes a garbled string of cursing that makes even He Tian’s eyebrows rise. He doesn’t make conversation again.

When the barman returns, he looks even less accommodating than when He Tian first said Guan Shan’s name. He juts an arm out, a scrap of paper between his index and forefinger. He Tian doesn’t wait; he slides it neatly into the pocket of his jeans.

‘Thanks,’ he says, knowing that the guy shouldn’t have given it at all. He Tian wouldn’t have given it to someone like himself.

‘Don’t,’ the guy says. ‘If my boss finds out…’

‘Your boss. Who is that?’

The guy’s eyes narrow. ‘Why?’

‘I’m curious.’ He holds his hands up. ‘Not a narc. I swear. They’ve got a good place here. Helpful staff.’

That earns him an exasperated look, a hand pulled through hair. ‘He and his family own bars like this place all over the city.’

‘I didn’t know.’

‘The She family keep a low profile.’

He Tian blinks. ‘Right,’ he says. Then: ‘Thanks for the note. I appreciate it.’

‘Whatever,’ the guy says. He’s picked up the glass again. It’s already dry, but maybe he needs to do something with his hands. He Tian can feel eyes on his back all the way to the door.

* * *

‘Tread carefully around him. That boy’s like a tiger with a headache today. The kids at school just never give him a break. You’d think they’d be old enough by now. I should tell the principle, I know, but he’d only get angry…’

He Tian lets Guan Shan’s mother lead him into her home, and it takes a while for him to understand that he’s here. That her home is Guan Shan’s home. That the living room belongs to him, that he puts his shoes off here. He Tian sees a blazer thrown over the back of a chair by the dining table, and it’s the one He Tian sees him in every day.

Looking around, it’s a crowded sort of home. He Tian thinks being there feels like being with Guan Shan.

His mother, he thinks, as soon as she opens the door, looks like him: the hair. The expression that hesitates towards an untenable kind of vulnerability. The narrow shoulders. His height, He Tian thinks, must be from his father.

It smells familiar in the kitchen, and He Tian knows why. He glances in and sees the image, like a hologram: Guan Shan at the stove, moody and recalcitrant, one hand on the wooden spoon, the other in a fist at his side. The most reluctant chef there ever was. Here, He Tian imagines him sprawled on the sofa, strip of pale flesh across his stomach peering from beneath the rise of his shirt. Here, he imagines him lurching from his room, in the morning, face lit up by the glow of the fridge. Every end of his hair pointed up.

He stumbles when he realises Guan Shan’s mother is in front of him, stopped by a door. Staring at him.

‘This is him,’ she says. They’ve only walked a few feet from the front door.

‘Thanks,’ he says. ‘I won’t be long.’

She gives him a grateful smile, and her eyes, He Tian notices, are his, too. They’re warm.

Could Guan Shan’s look like that if he wanted?

He Tian goes in without knocking, shuts the door with a click behind him, and leans his back against the frame.

It’s dark in here, blinds drawn. The glow of a laptop shines on Guan Shan’s face; he’s leaning over the keyboard, cross-legged on his bed.

For a moment He Tian stares at him. Forgets about the enormity of it all: that he’s in his _room._ That it’s not, perhaps, how he had wanted it. How he’d wanted it was different. It would have been a chaste kiss at the doorway, and an expression that said he didn’t think He Tian was capable of chaste.

It would have been a hand on his wrist, light, barely there, pulling him over the threshold.

It would have been He Tian pulling his t-shirt over his head and getting to stare at him. Touch him with hands that are learned as much as they are learning, because He Tian looks at his skin like it’s a canvas he wants to know how to paint.

And he does stare at him. Does look at him.

But it’s not what he wants to see. And the canvas is bruised and his lip is torn and he looks—

It makes He Tian’s voice get stuck in his throat.

Guan Shan, at last, looks up. He doesn’t move. His face says nothing. It doesn’t need to. ‘Get out,’ he says. His voice is hoarse. Like it’s overused. Like he’s been—screaming.

‘What did you—?’ But He Tian bites the rest of his words off.

_The kids at school just never give him a break._

‘You said you were okay,’ he says instead.

‘No, I didn’t. Now fuck off.’

He Tian steps forward. He almost misses it, because it’s dark, but he doesn’t: Guan Shan leans, ever so slightly, back. His eyes, ever so slightly, tighten.

 _He’s afraid_ , He Tian thinks.

He remembers the last time he’d touched him and realised the same. Guan Shan had been shaking beneath his hands. He Tian feels cavernous. _How long?_ he wants to ask, for the second time. He doesn’t.

‘When?’ he says instead. Because it wasn’t from school.

‘Does it matter?’

‘It matters to me.’

Guan Shan gives him a strange look, and He Tian doesn’t know what it means. Guan Shan closes the lid of the laptop, and suddenly the room is plunged into darkness, only the faintest lines of light cutting through the gaps in the blinds. Even here, He Tian can see the faint whorls of dust.

He can’t, more importantly, see the shining bruises on Guan Shan’s cheekbone, or the darkened eye that is only half-open. He can’t see the purpling marks that peer out from the neckline of his t-shirt. Maybe they stop there. Maybe they cover the length of him.

He Tian presses his hands into the wood of the door behind him.

‘Your mother doesn’t know,’ he says.

‘What do you think?’ It’s a dry question that doesn’t need an answer. It reminds He Tian of the guy behind the bar: a kind of bitterness that shouldn’t come from a voice so young. Eyes narrowed and too shrewd for someone so—Someone like him.

‘Have you reported it?’

‘ _What do you think_?’

‘Have you—’

‘Oh, _just stop_ , would you? _Just stop_.’

Guan Shan’s fingers are in his hair. The heels of his palms are pressed into his head. Perhaps it hurts him quite a bit. Perhaps he wants it. He’s curled in on himself, elbows pressed into his knees. He Tian wants to unwind him. He wants to smooth out his edges and his sharp lines. He wants him to unravel beneath his hands.

‘I wanted to—’ He stops. He doesn’t know what he wanted. ‘I thought I should come and see you.’

‘I’ve been doing this a while, He Tian,’ Guan Shan says. He lifts his head, and it’s like the moment where he’d—lost it, is, suddenly, gone. It’s like it hasn’t happened. He Tian wonders if he’s imagined it. ‘Your grand revelation is only meaningful because it involves _you_.’

 _A while_ , He Tian thinks. And he remembers the bandages and the plasters on his skin. _Always in fights, that kid_ , the teachers would say. And He Tian would think, _Yeah. Someone should sort him out. Someone like me._ His own arrogance is startling to him now.

‘You know me,’ He Tian says. It’s a deprecating thing and it feels strange to say because it’s not really him.

‘No, I don’t,’ Guan Shan says.

He Tian swallows. His nails are in the wood now. He’s not sure he can handle the way Guan Shan’s looking at him when his face is—when he’s like that.

Eventually, He Tian pulls away. It takes a deep breath to get him moving. He covers the space between the bed and the door in two strides that could have taken him one if he was more certain. He feels nothing like certain when he stands at the side of Guan Shan’s bed.

Guan Shan’s eyes are wide, and he looks briefly startled. Briefly taken aback. He Tian likes him like that, caught unaware. It’s the moment that’s usually hidden from He Tian: the moment between the anger and a nonchalance that’s almost cruel.

He can hear cars outside Guan Shan’s window. He can hear Guan Shan’s mother moving about outside the door. There’s no fan in the room, no air conditioning, and even though it’s shuttered against the sun He Tian realises suddenly how hot it is. How his t-shirt is sticking to him.

He sits next to Guan Shan on the bed, not sure what else to do, knowing that the way he was standing, towered over him, casting a shadow on him in a room made only of shadows, wasn’t right.

He Tian wonders if it’s a good thing that he’s conscious of it now. Aware of the way he moves and places his body, when it always used to run on instinct. He used to just do what he wanted. And, still, most of the time, he does. He can’t let himself be like that now around him.

They’ve been talking but not saying much. And, this close, Guan Shan still looking at him with a kind of wariness that makes him look young, He Tian needs to fill it.

‘There are scholarships,’ he tells him, because he’s spent all weekend thinking of something else. Something other than _that_. ‘You can apply for grants. Get loans. Pay them off when you earn enough.’

‘I didn’t qualify.’

Guan Shan’s tone is hard. He’s looking at his hands now, in his lap. And He Tian’s looking at them too. His nails are bitten to the skin. There are marks on his knuckles. He Tian is suddenly breathlessly _glad_ that he’s alive.

‘Why not?’

‘They don’t give money to kids who have a record for assault.’

He Tian frowns. ‘What have you—?’ And then he remembers. Middle school. The last few weeks that had felt as hot and still as the growing summer does now. The back of the school grounds. A rock in a scrabbled, desperate fist. Zhengxi on top of him, pressing him down. Face pressed into the concrete.

He Tian had been the one to suggest it all.

‘I didn’t—’

‘I’m not blaming you,’ Guan Shan interrupts, like he knows what he was about to say, can hear the horror in his voice, and doesn’t want to hear the rest of it.

‘You should,’ He Tian says, even though they both know he just tried to escape blame. But he—he can’t. He can’t take responsibility for that kind of thing. Can he?

‘Maybe,’ Guan Shan says. ‘You were the one that wanted me to finish school, weren’t you? Go to high school. Go to college. Guess I should thank you for the aspiration.’

‘That’s not—’

‘Not what?’ Guan Shan says, goading. ‘Not what you meant? Not _fair_?’

‘Yes,’ He Tian says, staring at him. ‘You know full fucking well I never meant for you to—for you to get into this. You knew full fucking well I’d never expect you to do this.’

Guan Shan snorts, leans back slightly. ‘Don’t flatter yourself, sweetheart. I didn’t do it for you.’

He Tian doesn’t ask who he did it for. He can feel the tension between them now. This close, it’s charged like static. Like if he reaches out he’ll get a shock. As if he doesn’t already feel something in him like he’s _live_.

‘Why wouldn’t you let me fucking help you? You knew I would have. You knew Jian Yi and Zhengxi would have.’

‘Like I’d ever fucking go to someone.’

‘You would,’ He Tian says, leaning in. His thigh is touching Guan Shan’s knee. ‘I know you would. You always said you weren’t that prideful. What changed?’

‘Don’t,’ Guan Shan says. ‘Don’t talk to me like—’

‘Like what?’

‘Like you _care_. Like I fucking mean something to you.’

‘Why do you think you don’t?’

‘Because people can be cruel when they’re hot for someone but they’re not _that_ cruel.’

‘I was fifteen.’

‘So was I.’

There’s something—in those words. And they lie between them. It takes He Tian a moment to realise they might be something else. Guan Shan looks away first.  

‘Just stop—You’re not a knight in shining armour, okay?’ he says. It’s a murmur. ‘Stop trying to pretend you’re a good guy. We both know you’re not.’

‘I’m not pretending.’

‘Yes, you are.’

‘No, I—’ He Tian bites his cheek. Why does this have to be so difficult with him now? It used to be so easier. _No,_ he thinks. _You just used to give him no choice._ ‘I’m not trying to be good. I’m not good. I just… You deserve more than that. You deserve more than me.’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘More than me?’

‘More than that,’ says Guan Shan. ‘What makes you think I get to have more than anyone else.’

He Tian stares at him. ‘That’s… No, Guan Shan,’ he says slowly, doesn’t think he understands. ‘It’s not more than anyone else. It’s just a normal life.’

Guan Shan didn’t expect that. He Tian feels it. Feels something, subtly, shift between them. He Tian thinks that maybe it’s a good kind of a shift. He hopes it is.

And the closeness, suddenly, is unbearable. Guan Shan’s gaze, youthful and open in its unawareness, is unbearable. He can still look like that after everything. More, He Tian can still shock him.

There’s something in the air like a question, and He Tian doesn’t think it’s going to be answered. And so, like most things, he takes a risk. He moves his hand towards Guan Shan slowly, and it’s an offering more than anything else. Guan Shan doesn’t move. His eyes are on He Tian the whole time.

It should be out of the question, but he does it anyway. Rests his palm against the skin of his cheek, so soft, knows that there’s a bruise lying beneath his fingers. Knows that someone else’s fingers were there before his for a different reason. He wants Guan Shan to remember this version of a touch – the one he’s giving him.

He Tian thumb brushes across his lower lip. Where he once placed it. He wishes he’d done it like this now, without the words. And, slowly, Guan Shan’s lips part, and it’s wonderful. He Tian could, if he wanted to, press his thumb further in. He wants to, but he doesn’t do it.

His skin is hot, and so is Guan Shan’s, and it means that when he touches him there’s no surprise there. It’s just skin on skin. There’s no contrast. Nothing unbalanced and startling. And it’s exactly how He Tian wants it. He doesn’t do anything more.

There’s a silence of waiting. And then, after a moment, Guan Shan leans in. Or, rather, he moves. Slightly. An incline. It’s a suggestion of something more than the thing itself, and it’s enough.

‘Remember,’ Guan Shan says, lips barely stirring. He Tian leans further in. Wants to catch them. And Guan Shan’s eyes lift to his, beneath the lashes. He says, ‘If you want to fuck me you’ll have to pay me first.’

He Tian hears it, and things—shift slightly. He Tian is staring at him. Slowly, he pulls his hand away. His skin feels like it’s crawling now.

Guan Shan is staring. Waiting.

He Tian—leaves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted here: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/151958229864/hush-36


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted here: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/152045726089/hush-46
> 
> EDIT: I accidentally only posted half of this chapter originally. I'm sorry!! ;w;

He Tian goes home. It takes him two hours because he doesn’t know the part of the city where Guan Shan lives and because he’s not thinking, really, about where he’s going. But he needs to go. Needs to leave. Needs to be somewhere that isn’t there. Isn’t with him and words that he feels like razors.

His head is spinning, and every lurch of his legs and brush of his arms at his sides feels mechanic.

The sky is lit up with streaks of red by the time he gets to his apartment, lit up like the aftermath of a bomb, and He Tian thinks he’s familiar with the feeling of burning.

_If you want to fuck me you’ll have to pay me first._

He hears it with every footstep. Laced at the edges of blaring car horns and shutters closing on shop windows and too-heavy bass of a radio. He hears it until it’s almost ready to form on his mouth.

The awful part is not that Guan Shan said it. That it cut through He Tian until he felt it on bare bone. That it was so matter-of-fact as to be almost courteous. That Guan Shan’s expression was blank and waiting, even when his cheeks were flushed from the closeness of He Tian and from the heat. That he doesn’t talk—doesn’t look like he used to much anymore.

The awful part is that, for a moment, He Tian had—thought about it.

Now, he tries to do anything but think about it. And it’s not difficult, when he sees her, to shutter away his expression.

Wenling is at his door when he steps out of the elevator. She’s on the floor, scrolling through her phone. Her dress is riding up. She looks up at the sound of the elevator bell.

‘ _Finally_ ,’ she says, using the handle to pull herself up. ‘Would it kill you to check your goddamn phone?’

When he pulls it out his pocket, there are three unread texts and a handful more phone calls. They’re all from her.

‘What’s wrong?’ he says.

She stares at him, mouth open. ‘What’s wrong? You said we’d study. That’s what’s wrong.’

He remembers a vague promise, and it doesn’t quite make him feel anything like guilt.

But he says, ‘Sorry,’ because her expressions of hurt are never petulant, and because he wishes sometimes that he could be the person she wants him to be; the person, sometimes, she thinks he is.

‘I don’t feel like studying now,’ he says, entering the code on his door. ‘You should have left.’

‘I wanted to check you were okay.’

‘I’m sure you’ve got better things to be doing,’ he says, holding the door for her as she follows in behind him. He turns on the kitchen lights and a lamp in the living area. Outside, the sky is a darkening red of closing summer nights, but the air-conditioning makes the apartment feel cold.

‘I don’t, actually,’ Wenling says. ‘I have my final exam tomorrow. That’s what I’ve got to be doing. You’ve got it too. I thought you said you wanted to pass this one.’

He Tian sticks his head in the fridge. He finds a bowl of cold rice and bottle of beer. He wonders when there was every anything else in there, but knows, suddenly, when it was. ‘I changed my mind.’

‘You shouldn’t be drinking on a school night.’

He gives Wenling a flat look over his shoulder. ‘Don’t pretend last Monday wasn’t your idea.’

‘I mean you shouldn’t be drinking when it’s your last exam. I thought you weren’t supposed to, what was it, _look like a fuck up._ ’

He Tian sighs and presses his forehead to the chrome surface of the fridge door. It’s cold, but his skin still feels hot. He needs a shower. To get out of his clothes. To feel clean. Needs to turn the temperature up hot until he’s burning from that and not the quiet way Guan Shan watched him as He Tian shut the door, left him in his shadowed room.

‘He Tian?’

‘Not now, Wenling.’

‘Not now.’ Her voice is dull. ‘It’s always _not now_. When, then, He Tian? For fuck’s sake, when?’

‘Not _now_.’

When he turns she’s shaking her head. Her arms are bare, wrapped tight around her. He can see the way the flesh of her arms dimples beneath the pressure of her fingers. It looks bruising, and it’s a feeling he’s familiar with.

‘What am I supposed to do, He Tian?’ she says, quiet. ‘What am I supposed to do to make me mean something to you?’

He leans back against the fridge door. Arms crossed. They’re a mirror. ‘You mean something to me.’

‘Mean something _important_. Mean something so you don’t forget when we’re supposed to spend time together. So you feel sorry—really _sorry_ when you forget. Mean something so you feel like you can tell me things.’

‘I didn’t ask you to do that. I didn’t ask you to put yourself in a position where you felt like I should have to give you that.’

‘ _I need you_ ,’ she says, flatly. There’s no tone in her words. They’re mocking him. ‘That’s what you said to me.’

He Tian closes his eyes. ‘I was sixteen, Wenling. I was confused.’

He was confused. And she had been there. Making promises with her eyes and her mouth. _I won’t tell_ , she’d said. _I promise_. And he wondered what else she would keep secret for him. What else they could do that no one would ever know. And he hadn’t regretted it.

Maybe, he thinks, he’s beginning to.

‘And now you’re not,’ Wenling says. ‘You’re eighteen, He Tian. You’re an adult.’

‘So are you,’ he tells her, opening his eyes again. ‘Do I have to fucking spell everything out to you?’

‘Don’t do that.’

‘Do what?’

‘Close yourself off. Act like a bitch with me. You’re the one with the psychotic desire to shoulder everything on your own. I’m telling you that you don’t need to.’

Her words, he realises, sound so much like his own had sounded to Guan Shan. But he doesn’t want to hear them from her, and he wonders, maybe if this is what it had felt like to Guan Shan. How did you tell someone that you weren’t fine but that you didn’t want their help – that their help wasn’t going to _make_ you fine.

He Tian draws in a breath. He can feel his jaw shift. Knows what he’s going to say to her. Her expression is going to be what he thinks it will be, because there’s only one person he can say things to and not know what he might get back.

He says, ‘Do you want me to fuck you?’ And then: ‘Will that make you _feel_ _important_?’

 _That’s right,_ he thinks, watching as her face flushes red. Shame. Embarrassment that he might be right. Anger that he’s so insolently crude. Hate that he knows he said it because he knows the reaction.

‘You’re a piece of shit, He Tian.’

‘No?’ he says, moving forward. She’s taking steps back, and eventually she hits the arm of the sofa, fingers biting into the fabric. ‘I’m wrong?’  

He doesn’t stop until his legs are pressed against hers. She’s tall compared to most of the girls in their year, but he’s the tallest in their school, and she’s tiny when he’s this close. Face turned down, expression hidden in shadows and a mass of long dark hair.

It’s easy to make her feel small – to crowd her in.

‘No, Wenling?’ he murmurs. His breath disturbs the loosest strands of her hair. ‘Do you want me to _fuck_ you?’

It’s not surprising when she pushes him away, heel of her palm digging in against his chest and shoving. He could have stood there and weathered it, but he doesn’t. Takes a step back. Her lip is shaking. Her arms are shaking. Her face is too shadowed for him to make out the look on it, but he thinks he can guess what it might be.

‘Why do you have to be so cruel?’ she whispers.

He knows they have a week left. He knows that he could save this now if he wanted to; make sure that the week they have isn’t spoiled, that she won’t leave and remember him like this, dark words and darker eyes and something that’s too much for a girl like her to handle.

But he doesn’t answer her question, not because he doesn’t know. And he doesn’t stop her when she leaves. Doesn’t move when she grabs her bag from the doorway, eyes flashing to his like she’s waiting for him to do something, knowing really that he never would. That he has a boundary. Knowing that he’s doing this for some reason that is too painfully unclear.

The door closes, her dark hair slipping behind the frame.

 _This isn’t cruelty,_ he thinks when it clicks shut. He remembers, so clearly, the way he’d thought about Guan Shan’s words. What that made him. _This is kindness._

* * *

It’s difficult to run in the day. It’s either too hot or too full of people, and He Tian ends up bumping into strollers and ambling tourists more often than not. At night the air isn’t cool, but the dark has the promise of it. At night he can hear his breathing more; he can hear his footsteps; the music in his ear is never louder than it is at night.

He runs a path through the People’s Park, bordered by a small grove of trees that tries to pretend it’s not in a city, and pretends skyscrapers don’t loom over it and blot out half the sky. At night, they’re even more omnipotent: the lights struggle to compete with the stars, and warm air gets trapped between the buildings. Somehow, they make the park seem quieter, but quietness is easy to mimic once the sun slips away.

At first it’s a jog, because he’s ripped muscles and torn the back of his calves trying to sprint the whole thing before. It doesn’t mean that he doesn’t want to sprint, and tonight he wants to more than ever. There’s something quietly simmering beneath the surface of him that feels like waiting, and he has to tell it to be patient, to take it slow. It would be easy to make a mistake.

But after the first twenty minutes any warning is futile: the trees are slipping away too fast; his feet are pounding into the tarmac, the sound chasing itself, the impact running up his legs, nails biting into his palms as he clenches his fists, breath ripping out in sharp, concentrated bursts, chest rising and falling in time.

And He Tian runs like that for half an hour. An hour. Tireless and ceaseless and he’s ripping out of himself by the end of it. Can feel himself breaking in two because no one should be able to keep that up for long, and it’s _insane_ because he thinks he, of all people, should be _able_ to.

But he can’t. And he doesn’t. And eventually his legs are buckling underneath him and he has to collapse onto the bench before he gives out, before everything tilts.

‘You should pace yourself,’ a voice says.

He Tian is trying to breathe, clutching at his chest, vest soaked, and it takes a while for him to turn his head, pulling out his earphones.

‘Yeah,’ he says to the guy next to him. He’s reading a newspaper in a suit, the pages glowing beneath the orange lamplight from above. Gnats swarm around the light, and when He Tian’s breathing slows and the roads grow emptier beyond the park, he can hear the quiet _tap tap tap_ of their bodies flung against the glass, desperate to reach what they think could be the moon. How sad they are; how wrong.

‘Have you been trained?’ the guy says, turning the page. He shakes the paper out to straighten it. He isn’t looking at He Tian, so it means He Tian can look at him: at the dark hair without a spec of grey, the face that is severe but not lined. He Tian can’t place his age. ‘You lapped here near on fifty times like you were running from something.’

‘I had a hard day at school,’ He Tian says, breathing even now. His heart is still thudding against his ribs.

‘At school?’ the guy says. This time he does look at He Tian, a cursory up-and-down look. ‘Wouldn’t have placed you as a school kid.’

‘I’m tall for my age.’

‘Hm,’ the guy says. He Tian has the distinct impression that he’s laughing at him.

He doesn’t care. Can’t care. The day is coming back to him now, slowly, in pieces: Wenling’s look that was withering and scared and yearning, flashing across her face in bursts; Huo Qi’s rolling eyes because ‘girls are such a fucking hassle’, the exam he could barely think through and the moment of mild panic because what if he does fuck up – his uncle didn’t say if that was an ultimatum, or what the consequences were.

And then there was Guan Shan. Still bruised and torn, and he didn’t look at He Tian. Didn’t look at anyone. Didn’t look at Li Lao Shi when she asks to see him after the exam is finished. And He Tian wondered if Guan Shan had been revising the night before, or doing something else. He wondered what would have happened if he had palmed Guan Shan a handful of notes when he’d asked. If he would have just fallen to his knees, gotten on with it, because a cock was a cock. Because it didn’t matter who it was once you had the cash in your pocket and your mouth around the length of it.

He Tian swallows down his nausea, and it’s not just from the running. The guy, next to him, is still reading the paper. Pretending to, maybe.

He needs to leave, he knows. To go home and shower. To eat something. To get some sleep or something close enough. But right now the air is warm on his skin, sweat cooling on the back of his neck. There’s a breeze picking up, and it rustles the pages of the paper.

A sigh. ‘Well, I’d best be off,’ the man says. He folds the paper over. ‘Time and tide wait for no man.’

‘Good night,’ says He Tian.

‘Would you like my paper?’

‘I’m more of an internet kind of guy.’

‘That’s a shame,’ the man says, standing. He leaves the paper there. ‘I think you’d find parts of it to be really very enlightening, He Tian.’

Maybe it’s because he’s worn. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t care. Maybe it’s because he knows his family and his brother too well. But he doesn’t hear the words until the man is walking through the trees of the park, towards the road, until his shadowed form is lost and there are no lamplights to make him out.

He Tian stares at the paper on the bench. It’s from today. The pages flutter.

It’s in his hands before he knows he’s moved, shaking fingers tearing through the pages, through the advice columns and the adverts and the news section and then he’s kneeling on the ground, because it’s fallen apart in his hands.

The photos are face-down when he sees them, peeking out between the pages. They’re printed like polaroids.

He Tian turns them. And stares.

* * *

It’s difficult to breathe for a while. Difficult to do anything. He can feel himself running again, though.

He can feel the pavement slipping away beneath him, knows that he’s passing street signs and that he’s nearly hit by cars because the blare of horns is filling his head but it can’t hide the rest of it. Can’t push it away. It’s like an eel; he thinks he’s got it in his hands, squeezed tight, and then it’s escaping and swimming away and taunting. Except it’s thorny. And the spikes are each filled with a slow kind of poison that is threatening to tear him apart. And it taunts by getting too close, too close, grazing his skin.

But he doesn’t freeze up. It’s not that kind of poison, not that type that locks him up until he’s stuck with it in his head and exists only in his head. He is stuck with it, but it’s burning instead, flames chasing across his skin until he almost thinks he can smell the acrid char of himself alight, can see the smoke in the distance that is only cloud lit up by skyscraper lights.

It’s enough to make his blood singe inside of him, enough that he doesn’t think he can stop even if he wants to. Too much momentum. Too much drive. Flames at his heels, sweat on his skin like he’s approaching a furnace.

He runs.

* * *

‘You can’t just _barge_ —’

‘Shut the fuck up.’

He Tian doesn’t let him speak. Slams the door behind him.

He knows Guan Shan’s mother’s at work – she told He Tian her working hours the last time he was here in an attempt at casual conversation. He knows the way to Guan Shan’s bedroom. Knew the way to his apartment since his first visit on Sunday.

He knows, too, that he shouldn’t have run, because now his head is pounding and his calves are pulling and twinging and they’ll hurt in the morning, and he thinks he might black out soon from the heat and the exhaustion of it all if he doesn’t need to stay awake.

Needs to _know_.

‘You told me you wanted it.’

Guan Shan is not in the mood for it. His bruises are already yellowing, daisy-colour in the dim lamplight of his bedroom. ‘I’m not doing this again,’ he says, tired, irritated. ‘I’m not.’

‘You told me you wanted it, Guan Shan.’

‘He Tian, I swear to god… I’m… not…’

‘You told me,’ He Tian says again, arm outstretched, throat thick. ‘You told me you wanted it.’

He watches as Guan Shan sees the photos in his hand. And it hurts He Tian to watch him more than it does to look at the pictures. To know, while he was running, what was in his pocket.

Guan Shan’s face is ashen. He Tian has never seen his eyes so dark. He looks like he’s been hit, but this time his whole face is the bruise, the split lip, the swelling eye. He Tian doesn’t think looking at someone should hurt so much.

_You don’t know anything. You don’t get it._

‘Is this what you meant?’ He Tian says. He can feel his heart pulse in his ears, can hear his own voice in the vague, distant way that someone can hear a scream underwater. ‘Is this—is this why you’re doing it? Because of these?’

‘Where did you get those,’ is all Guan Shan says, voice foreign and not his own. He’s still staring at them.

He Tian throws them on the bed, and Guan Shan’s eyes don’t even follow the movement. He’s frozen. Knows that the—the images of him are splayed out on his sheets. Some macabre kind of portfolio. Some sordid, wretched account preserved in the flash of a camera. He Tian, now, cannot look at them. At the figure in the pictures that he could, at first, barely recognise. And when he did it had been like an illusion, a mirage slotting together, once seen not able to be unseen.

He Tian wished— _wished_ he could unsee it.

He sees what they are now: a warning. _Don’t touch him_ , they say. _These are just a copy._

‘Where did you—’

‘It doesn’t matter where I got them. Some guy in a suit in the fucking park. Tell me. Is this why?’

‘He Tian—’

‘Please, Guan Shan. Please. _Is this why?_ ’

Finally, Guan Shan looks at him, and He Tian feels winded by it. Feels like he could have kept running for hours and not felt pain like this.

Guan Shan is devoid. There is nothing, really, that He Tian recognises. Can’t see the fire, the bite, the sharp edges of him. Can’t see the line between his eyebrows that he wears when he’s confused or irritated. Can’t see that casually cruel quirk of his lips that He Tian had come to understand meant he was still fighting. Still in there.

This… There is no one here.

‘He’s… He’s the uncle of an old friend,’ Guan Shan says.

‘She Li.’

There’s a slight waver, but Guan Shan doesn’t look surprised that he knows. He doesn’t look anything.

‘I was going through… You know what I was going through. I used to go around their house all the time. His uncle was there. But it wasn’t until…’

‘Until me.’

Guan Shan shakes his head. ‘Before that. When my dad…’

 _Before_ , He Tian hears. ‘He—he _preyed_ on you because your father left.’

‘He didn’t—Don’t make it sound like that. I asked for it.’

He Tian is staring. ‘You couldn’t have known what you were asking for,’ he hears himself say, a whisper. ‘I’ve—I have never seen you look as young as you do in those photos.’

‘I knew what I was asking for.’

He Tian feels sick listening to him. Listening to the way he thinks he knows. The way he… It’s not even blame. It’s acceptance. It’s self-accreditation. Taking on the responsibility of it like he and he alone took all of it on.

‘How could you,’ He Tian says. Everything, in his head, is static. ‘Those photos—what he’s done—’

‘Yes, I know what he’s _done_ , thank you. Don’t think I don’t.’

‘Don’t tell me you—Don’t say you forgive him. Don’t say you—what, you _love_ him?’

Guan Shan’s face is turned away. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he says.

He Tian is trying to remember the man in the park. Clean lines, a pressed suit. Maybe he was handsome, in an aging, lost-youth kind of way. He Tian doesn’t know. He can’t remember. Not remembering feels, now, like a betrayal.

‘And now?’ He Tian says. ‘He—what? Hands you out like a prize?’

‘I—He got me a _job_ , He Tian. I get _money_.’

‘Because he makes you _fuck_ people like he did to you when you were—’

‘And my mother doesn’t have to take on four fucking _jobs_ , all right?’ Guan Shan says, voice loud over his. ‘She gets more than three hours sleep a night so she’s not trying to pay the fucking _rent_ and for me to go to _school_ and—and it’s—the least I could—’

‘Don’t,’ He Tian says. ‘Don’t.’

Guan Shan’s eyes, suddenly, are alight. ‘If you don’t want to listen then you can _get the fuck out._ You’re the one who came with your fucking _tell me’s_ and—’

‘I don’t want to listen,’ He Tian says. He can’t stop thinking that Guan Shan is even telling him this to begin with. But he saw him in the alleyway. He’s seen the bruises. And then—the photos—and he thinks he must be the only person that knows. ‘I don’t want to listen but I need you to tell me because I—I can’t stand that you’ve been carrying this—’

‘Give me a fucking break,’ Guan Shan says. He runs his hands through his hair and falls back onto the bed. The photos are next to him. He digs the heel of his palms into his eyes. ‘I’m not ruined, okay?’ he says. ‘I’m not broken. You’re the one that wants me to be like that so you can fix me. You’re the one that wants to make this into some fucking tragedy so you can—’

‘It is a tragedy. _It is_.’

Guan Shan stares at him. And then, when he starts to smile, He Tian realises he made a crucial error of judgment. His mind is swimming; everything is, slowly, starting to take a different shape. He’d been thinking that the smile was a fighting thing.  

It’s not.

It says: _I’ve already lost_ _and this is all I’ve got left to do._

Guan Shan says, carefully, ‘Then what does that make _me_?’

He Tian—doesn’t know what to say. He thinks he should. He’s supposed to have an answer. _Not broken,_ his mind supplies. _Ready to be fixed. Ready to be loved—properly._ But it all sounds wrong. It all sounds like what Guan Shan said he was making it sound like, and he doesn’t want that at all. It’s not what he really means.

‘I don’t know,’ he says, because the silence is stretching too long. And Guan Shan is looking at him with that smile that says he knows.

‘You don’t know.’

‘Why haven’t you gone to the police?’ He Tian says. He doesn’t want to keep talking like that. He wants things to be empirical and weighted and to have some meaning that is Spartan — something that makes sense.

Instantly, Guan Shan’s expression closes off. Goes hard. His lips are pressed in a stiff line. ‘Why would I?’ he says. ‘I’d be ruined. I’ve got an income. May as well stick with it while I can.’

 _An income._ He Tian wants to laugh, because Guan Shan is—right. It is an income. It’s a job. How insane is that. And He Tian thinks that Guan Shan has worked more than He Tian has ever done in his whole life. _Poverty or this_ , Guan Shan seems to be telling him, and He Tian has never had to make that decision.

‘My uncle takes on paid interns out of high school,’ He Tian says. ‘Come and work for him. Part-time. You can do it while you go to college.’

‘One uncle to another, is it?’

He Tian feels like he’s been slapped. It hurts more than it did when Guan Shan had actually hit him the week before.

‘Oh. That was a bit close, wasn’t it?’ Guan Shan says. ‘You wouldn’t like the thought of your uncle with his hands all over me and my mouth on his—’

He Tian is on him before he knows what he’s doing. There’s a knee in the middle of Guan Shan’s chest, pressing him down, a hand over his mouth, the other pinning his wrists above him. His eyes aren’t even wide. Not even shocked. Like he’s used to this, and just has to lie back and let He Tian do it. Like he’s—been in this position before.

Slowly, He Tian removes the hand from his mouth. Presses it, instead, on the sheets beside Guan Shan’s head. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. His voice is shaking. He thinks how in control he feels with Wenling, how he feels like he’s on top of everything. And now, on top of Guan Shan, he’s never felt more unstable. ‘I wish you wouldn’t talk like that.’

Guan Shan looks up at him. ‘You were always the one with the filthy mouth,’ he says.

He Tian can see the photos out the corner of his eye, at the end of the bed, and Guan Shan is watching him look at them, like he’s curious.

‘Things change,’ He Tian says. He feels, suddenly, exhausted. Can feel how cold he is, sweat frozen on him now. Guan Shan’s room is not hot like it was the last time, and now his bones are aching and it’s a struggle to hold himself up over him. He feels himself drop a little, and moves his knee from Guan Shan’s chest until he’s just leaning back on his thighs across Guan Shan’s legs, the hand pinning Guan Shan’s hand removed.

Guan Shan doesn’t move, leaves his hands where they are, stretched out before him. He’s still looking at He Tian.

He says, quietly, ‘Why are you really here? Why not go straight to the police with those photos?’

‘Because you’d hate me.’

‘You’re right.’

‘You hate me,’ He Tian says, dully.

‘No. But I would. If you did that.’

He Tian nods, ignores the way his heartbeat slows in his ears in a slight rush of relief. He shouldn’t feel it so unequivocally. He shouldn’t want to feel it so _much_.

‘How do you feel about me?’ Guan Shan says. It’s—startlingly honest. And open. And it would be even more unnerving if his expression hadn’t been as mild as it was. He Tian tries to imagine him asking something like that in middle school, when they were fifteen and stupid and got bothered by even stupider things. The thought almost makes him want to laugh: he can see a younger Guan Shan asking him that, eyes hidden behind a hand, lips stirring around struggling words, face flamed in painful, youthful shyness.

There’s none of that now, and He Tian feels a sense of loss for it. What could have been.

‘I would have killed to have you underneath me like this,’ He Tian admits freely.

‘Really,’ Guan Shan says. He doesn’t sound surprised, but there’s something lingering there that He Tian can’t quite make out. ‘And now?’

‘And now…’ He Tian sucks in a breath. ‘I guess it feels—wrong.’

Guan Shan sits up, not fully, just leaning his weight on his arms. ‘Wrong.’

‘Like I’m—taking advantage. Maybe.’

Guan Shan raises an eyebrow. ‘Taking advantage,’ he says. He Tian is getting the distinct impression, with every thrown-back echo of his own words, that Guan Shan thinks he is not a little ridiculous.

He looks down at him, irritated. ‘You know what I mean.’

‘Do I.’

‘ _Guan Shan_ —’

He doesn’t continue. Doesn’t know what he was going to say anyway. Guan Shan’s hand is warm on the back of his neck, chilled with cold, drying sweat, pulling him down. His lips are soft on his.

They don’t move, so it’s like the last time Guan Shan was close enough to do this: it becomes a suggestion. A hint. But it’s more, and it’s touching, and the tiredness He Tian felt is chased away by this feeling of being suddenly, electrically, alive.

It barely lasts a five seconds. It’s the shortest, stillest kiss He Tian has ever had. It’s nothing like the kind of thing he once tried to give him. He has never wanted anything like this one more.

When Guan Shan’s hand falls away, his eyes are wild and wide, and they’re dark in a different way now. He looks startled, like he wasn’t the one to do it. Like the feel of his fingertips aren’t still lingering on the back of He Tian’s neck. He Tian is staring at him.

‘I didn’t—that wasn’t—’

He Tian watches Guan Shan struggle with himself. His teeth suddenly go to his lip, worrying. But He Tian puts a thumb across it, because it’s still healing from—from the last time. And He Tian wants to see him, soon, unbruised and unblemished and whole. Even if it’s a façade.

‘He Tian,’ Guan Shan murmurs, eyes low, watching as He Tian’s thumb brushes across his skin, across his lip, the dip at the corner of his mouth, the arch of his cheekbone.

And for a moment, He Tian remembers what happened the last time. Hears Guan Shan’s words – a taunt, now – in his ear. And he won’t deny that he tenses. Waiting, almost, for him to say it.

But Guan Shan doesn’t. He’s silent, and still, but not quite. He’s hard beneath He Tian. And He Tian likes that he trembles when He Tian touches him. Realises that maybe Guan Shan doesn’t mean to; that, normally, he moves the way he has to, the way he’s—paid to. And now he can’t help himself.

‘I don’t want it to be like—that,’ He Tian tells him, quiet. ‘I’d rather have nothing at all.’

And Guan Shan’s eyes lift to meet his. ‘It won’t be,’ he says. ‘But I’ve—I’ve never—’

He Tian shakes his head. Doesn’t need him to say it. He leans down, and in, until his lips are almost touching again, and not quite. ‘Let me,’ he says, and he presses his forehead to his, lets his eyes shut, feels like he’s making a prayer. ‘Let me show you how it could be. Please.’

There’s a pause. A moment. And it stretches and He Tian thinks he’s made a mistake. Said something wrong. Gone too—too far. But when he opens his eyes, so slightly, he can see that Guan Shan’s eyes are shut too, screwed tight. Warring with something in himself that He Tian _knows_ he could never get to. Could never touch. This is all Guan Shan’s. But then, when He Tian thinks he’s going to say no, so slowly, so beautifully, he nods.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted here: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/152045726089/hush-46


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted here: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/152170758324/hush-56

He Tian, typically, has been the kind of person to do things without really questioning them. It’s a throw-away mindset. A ‘deal with it later’ mindset. It’s remarkably non-millennial, he thinks. Forget the instant, the immediacy of the now. A problem is not going anywhere. And if it does, then that is not so much a shame.

He is shaking, though, because he cannot help but question everything. He is shaking because he wants everything _now._ Because Guan Shan, beneath him, trembling, is not going anywhere. He has him now – he has him later, perhaps, if Guan Shan wants that. The permanence of it is remarkable.

It is remarkable that he can touch him, that they are both clothed, that he can kiss him. It is freeing in a way He Tian has never felt before, and at the same time it is heavy like a weight tugging on his heart in his chest.

‘Well?’ Guan Shan says eventually. His voice breaks a little.

‘Well,’ He Tian says, quiet. His hands are warm on Guan Shan’s sides. Guan Shan is trembling like a colt. He Tian doesn’t want to let him go. ‘I’m going to—I’m going to undress you.’

Guan Shan doesn’t say anything. His hands lay at his sides, fingers curled inwards. He lies there, and lets He Tian tug at the edges of his t-shirt. His hands ride up over Guan Shan’s skin as the shirt rises, the bump of his ribs against his chest, goosebump flesh, nipples he finds hard and pink as dusk.

Guan Shan is limp and loose as he lets He Tian pull it over his head, through his arms. The flush on his face creeps up all over his chest and it’s—phenomenal.

But then—He sucks in a breath.

‘Guan Shan—’

‘They don’t hurt.’

He Tian stares at him. ‘I think you’re lying.’

Guan Shan is silent at this, and He Tian brushes his hands over his skin. There are patches of purple across his ribs like he’s made of violet skies and lavender, and He Tian wished he could have found it beautiful. His fingers, now, are softer, not pressing or grasping like they were before he knew. He wonders if Guan Shan’s quiet gasping as he’d kissed him had been from this. He Tian hopes, with a kind of arrogance, that it wasn’t.

‘Don’t be so…’

He Tian’s eyes lift back up to his. He Tian has never seen his face so bright. ‘So?’

‘ _Careful_ ,’ Guan Shan says. ‘I’m not going to break. I’ve had worse.’

He Tian wants to tell him not to talk about that. About what Guan Shan has _had_. But he knows that if he’s—if they’re going to do this then he needs to be able to look at him and listen to him without wanting to tell him not to.

Guan Shan is waiting for him, he realises, because his hands have stilled. He breathes slow, and careful, and it’s ridiculous that He Tian should need time. That he should be the one to—come to terms with this. But he knows that it is not, entirely, about Guan Shan. It’s about the way one of the bruises looks like a toecap, how his lip is probably the imprint of a ring edge. He’s careful because he’s angry, and he’d hate to show that to him. To make Guan Shan think this will be like every other time.

‘It won’t.’

He Tian realises he’s said it out loud, realises it with a quiet flush that is no match for the colour of roses creeping, still, across Guan Shan’s skin.

‘You talk more when you’re nervous,’ Guan Shan tells him. His eyes reach his, for a second, before they dart away. His arm is bent, thumb nail running across his lower lip in a slow, slow drag. It’s the pose of a pensive statue, a youth caught in thought.

‘I’m not nervous,’ He Tian tells him. The movement of his thumb, the slight indent it leaves, the white trail of pressed skin, is hypnotising.

‘No?’ Guan Shan says. The thumb falls away, hand beside his head, and He Tian feels a slight pang that it has ended. And then the illusion falls away: that quiet image of him that could have been immortalised shatters. His gaze is piercing. ‘Then _fuck me_ ,’ Guan Shan says.

He Tian does not wait.

He climbs off the bed, thighs stiff where he’d been kneeling across him, and starts to work at the button and zip of Guan Shan’s jeans. There’s a moment where he presses his hand into the fabric, leans his weight into the hardness of him, and the sound from Guan Shan makes He Tian shudder with the slow curl of heat that works his way up him.

When he’s naked, He Tian stares at him. He hasn’t been able to stop staring at him. If he blinks perhaps it might disappear. If he blinks perhaps Guan Shan might—change. Might twist. Might decide this isn’t what he wants. He Tian couldn’t bare to stop.

His legs are pale and lightly muscled and He Tian cannot believe how long they look. How delicate his feet are. He wants to put his mouth on Guan Shan’s cock, lean as the rest of him, the tip red and leaking and he’s barely even been touched; He Tian has done this to him. Guan Shan is hairless there, soft to the touch, and He Tian has never seen anything like it before.

And he does: he puts his mouth on him. Barely gives Guan Shan enough time for his eyes to widen before He Tian’s on his knees and the heat of his mouth is closing around Guan Shan, wet and hot.

It’s enough for Guan Shan to let out a startled shout, torso lifting up off the bed. He Tian pushes him back down with a hand, feels, briefly, the tremble of Guan Shan’s stomach muscles, before he’s sliding down and Guan Shan’s cock is hitting the back of his throat, nudging against it. He does something he wants to try: swallows around him. It almost makes him gag, but it’s worth it for the sound Guan Shan makes, a choked whimper that is all guttural. Wanton. He Tian can see his knuckles white as they shake, fisting at the sheets at his sides.

He Tian slides off him, light graze of teeth, and Guan Shan is staring at him like he doesn’t know who he’s seeing. Like the puzzle pieces are yet to form something that means anything.

‘My hair,’ He Tian says. ‘You can put your hands in my hair.’

And he takes him back in his mouth again, just lets the length of him slide against his tongue in short, nudging motions. And then he hums. And then his eyes are stinging, Guan Shan’s fists pulling at his hair. He Tian doesn’t think pain like that should feel so good. He’s palming at the front of his jeans now, his other hand brushing across the softness of Guan Shan, everywhere, reaching back into him, finding the part of him that He Tian never thought he’d get to touch.

Guan Shan is pressing lube into his hand next, and then He Tian’s fingers are slick and his thumb is pressing against Guan Shan’s entrance, tongue working around his cock, hand pulling his own cock out now so he can stroke himself as he works a finger into him, feels him open up _so slowly._

It seems impossible, that he could be inside him. Impossible. He can’t—can’t fit there. He needs to be inside him.

He works another finger into him, and it’s excruciating, that slowness. Everything is rocking, and everything is like being in the ocean, and everything is made up of the hot flesh at Guan Shan’s hipbone, and the sounds he makes like he’s never heard himself like that before, and the taste of him on He Tian’s tongue like salt and soap.

Guan Shan’s feet, now, are pressed into the sheets, legs bent at the knees. He is breathlessly open to He Tian, and He Tian knows he’s going to remember this. Every closed-off expression; every bitten out growl of a word; he’ll think, only, of this moment.

Guan Shan is burning on his tongue by the time he’s sliding a third finger into him. He Tian’s chest feels like it’s constricting as he moves them in and out of Guan Shan’s body, brushing up against the walls of him, pressing too close sometimes so his whole body seizes up, clenches around He Tian’s fingers, and he can’t imagine what it’s going to feel like. Soon. Soon.

‘ _He Ti—Stop_ ,’ Guan Shan gasps now, holding himself up, pushing at He Tian’s shoulders. His hands are scrabbling and sweat-slicked, but He Tian pulls off, runs his tongue around his lips. ‘I’m going to come,’ Guan Shan says, voice high and distant. He sounds lost somewhere.

‘Then come,’ He Tian says easily, marks his words with a slight crook of his fingers because he’s still in him and Guan Shan— _moans._ Throws his head back, fists the sheets again, and He Tian can only look at the press of his ribs against his skin, at the curve of his throat as he shakes from it. He Tian runs his tongue along the length of him. Guan Shan’s head, too, is shaking back and forth.

‘I want to—I want to come with you,’ he gasps.

He Tian stills. Imagines, suddenly, the feel of Guan Shan growing tight and trembling around him. Imagines, suddenly, a shared moment of reaching what must be something near enough to the stars, minute fractures of time ripping apart inside of themselves. God, it is—he is too much.

‘Fuck,’ He Tian whispers. He pulls his fingers out, slowly, because he can’t even move them that much, looks at how small they are pressed together, slick and glistening, at how Guan Shan closes up like nature moving backwards. How could it ever be like this between them? This close. This sweet.

It can’t, almost, because Guan Shan says, ‘Fuck me before I change my mind.’

And everything takes on a different look; starts to tilt strangely. Edges start to curl in, and He Tian can feel himself moving before he knows it. His hands, suddenly, are full of Guan Shan’s skin as he kneels back on the bed, lifts Guan Shan until his legs are wrapped around He Tian’s waist, until Guan Shan is hovering over the tip of him, their chests flush against one another, Guan Shan’s cock pressed tight between their stomachs, and He Tian has to lean his shoulders back slightly to see the look on Guan Shan’s face. His eyes are so wide, pupils swallowing his irises until everything’s black and his skin, chest heaving, is the colour of a sunset.

‘Tell me if I do anything—’

‘ _Just do it_ ,’ Guan Shan groans.

 _Just do it?_ He Tian thinks.

Because Guan Shan isn’t confident now—isn’t sure of himself. He is quivering like a bow string, like a too-moral finger over a trigger. Like he’s new to it. He’s not. He Tian knows that. But he’s new to _this_ , maybe, new to He Tian, and it’s breaking them both.

He shifts, and suddenly he’s pressing against Guan Shan there. There’s a pressure, building, like it’s not going to break, and Guan Shan is crying out into the crook of He Tian’s neck, nails biting into He Tian’s back, and He Tian almost stops. But then he’s opening up for him, loosening just for him, just enough—not _nearly_ enough—and He Tian can’t accept that this is _real_. That he gets to have this.

‘Guan Shan,’ he says, fighting to catch his breath as he slides into him, buries himself inside of him. He has never felt this before.

He has to close his eyes, hold himself still. The heat is almost unbearable. He Tian can’t tell if he’s breathing or if it’s the feel of Guan Shan’s lungs filling; if his heartbeat is his own; if the feeling there is the pulsing of his cock or Guan Shan pulling on him, fluttering around him.

Time passes—too much. And suddenly Guan Shan is rocking into him, digging his heels into He Tian’s back, sliding himself over and over onto him. And eventually He Tian, with a kind of startled desperation, starts to meet him half-way, and it leaves them shuddering and overwhelmed in a way that feels, almost, like crying.

They go like that, and He Tian can feel Guan Shan’s cock sliding in the sweat across his stomach with every thrust, feel the way Guan Shan tightens, almost, at every shift of his body, like every joining they make is sending shocks through him. They kiss, and it is searching, and He Tian finds everything he thinks he might be looking for in him.

He Tian is losing himself in it: the heat that is almost too much; the sure grip of Guan Shan’s fingertips in his shoulder blades like He Tian can carry them through; the sound Guan Shan makes in his ear, so tenderly offered; the clinging, unending rocking, like this is enough.

And it is enough and suddenly too much, and Guan Shan is shaking his head, over and over and over. His shaking, now, feels like He Tian has an earthquake contained small and soft in his arms.

‘I’m going to—I can’t—’

‘Don’t hold back,’ He Tian tells him. He wants him to have this; he wants him to have everything.

‘No, I—Come with me. Come with me. Come with me.’

He Tian drives himself deeper—impossibly deeper. He shouldn’t be able to. Guan Shan’s nails dig in; He Tian can hear his throat closing around the air in the room, thick and charged and full of the smell of them, and He Tian starts to feel it.

The building charge beneath his skin, across his scalp, making his toes curl, muscles cramping as he tries to hold Guan Shan up, keep him there, keep him against him, and he’s shuddering and he can feel a strip of wet heat across his torso, a cry, and Guan Shan going limp, and everything is shuddering, and slipping away, and they let it.  

* * *

He Tian cannot decide if Guan Shan is more beautiful when he is awake or when he is asleep. Really, he knows that the two are not in contention with each other: his is a perpetual, lasting thing. It doesn’t disappear with the bruises that He Tian had forgotten were on his skin; it doesn’t leave when He Tian remembers his words, sharp and biting.

He can’t stop looking at him. The slight, inward curl of him, the way, at some point in the night, he had pressed himself into He Tian, and He Tian had taken his offering so pleasingly, an arm holding him close.

Guan Shan makes sleeping like an easy thing. He is stillness and swallowed breaths, sweat sheens that make his skin look like marble. Pre-dawn summer heat is already encroaching, and, quietly, He Tian shifts to open the window.

Quieter, he reaches down for his running shorts, finds a cigarette and a lighter, lets his hand hang out the window so the smoke doesn’t get in too much.

He doesn’t want the day to come: he would have everything endure at night if he could. But he remembers, too, the way sunlight can fall on Guan Shan’s hair and on his skin and turn him into something like the first burning waves of autumn. He remembers how Guan Shan’s words have an edge to them when they’re out in the open, a rawness that the subversiveness of night can’t seem to grasp.

Guan Shan makes a sound like a sigh, shifts closer to him, a tiny, subconscious, imperceptible yearning. He Tian brushes the back of his hand across his cheek. Fifteen-year-old him would have laughed at this image, he knows. That he could be this soft, this tentative.

He Tian is blowing smoke out the window when he eyes catch sight of them. The photos, on the floor. And immediately everything is not soft and tentative, and it is a wonder that it could ever have been. He reaches over the end of the bed to pick them up, cigarette balancing between his lips, and moves back to the head of the bed, legs crossed. He’s wearing a pair of Guan Shan’s black briefs, and he admires, vaguely, the way they look on him.

He doesn’t know why he wants to keep looking at them. He supposes, perhaps, that he’s hoping there are some answers in the photos that he might have to the question lying next to him. Maybe Guan Shan is the answer. Maybe the photos are the question; maybe they’re just a problem.

He looks at the pictures, and he’s trying to piece them together. Trying to put them in the context of last night. Trying to understand what happened after.

How Guan Shan had fallen loose and pliant against his pillows. How there had been the lingering traces of a smile on his face, blissed out and remarkably unselfconscious. It made He Tian want to do it again.

Guan Shan’s eyes had met his, after. ‘I’ve never—’ And he stopped. ‘That wasn’t like it usually is.’

He Tian had looked at him. ‘No?’

Guan Shan didn’t say anything but, ‘No,’ so He Tian wasn’t entirely sure what about it was different. Was it that, for once, he wasn’t thinking of the money at the end of it? Was it because He Tian wanted him to feel every curl of pleasure he could make him feel? Didn’t care if he even got to come. He Tian doubted that on a fundamental level: how could anyone look at him and not want to give him that?

‘Do I sound like a virgin?’ Guan Shan had asked him. He Tian thought he seemed to be laughing at himself.

‘No,’ He Tian told him. ‘It was different for me too.’

‘Because I’m a guy?’

‘Because I wanted it.’

Guan Shan blinked. ‘Isn’t that my line?’

‘Don’t,’ He Tian said. ‘I don’t want—I want this to be ours.’

‘You’re not jealous,’ Guan Shan said, flat.

He Tian sighed, leaned back against the pillows, head propped up in his hand. He looked down at Guan Shan, stretched out before him. He Tian’s come was in him still, and he could not stop thinking about it.

‘I’m not jealous,’ He Tian said, running a hand across Guan Shan’s stomach, feeling how he trembled under his lazy touch. Feeling him. _Mine,_ he thought. Didn’t want to think how, in every way, he was not his.

‘I’m not going to change,’ Guan Shan told him, in a quiet voice. ‘I can’t—I can’t do that for you.’

‘If you did I would want it because you were doing it to for you. I don’t want you to—to do anything if it’s not for you.’

He watched as Guan Shan had smiled, a helpless thing. He pressed his cheek into the pillow like he could hide it.

‘You’re so different,’ Guan Shan had said. ‘You used to be so much… harder.’

He Tian thought he still was. In a different way. A quieter way. A more dangerous way. But he said, ‘Oh?’

‘Not like _that_.’

He Tian looked down at himself; already he was half-hard. His eyes fell upon Guan Shan, glinting. ‘I think it’s too late.’

The rest of the night passed quickly.

Now, the morning a dark grey haze as the sun breaches the sky, he looks over, and it’s a small shock when he sees that Guan Shan’s eyes are open.

He’s watching him. The smile he wore in the night has gone. He had laughed once, and He Tian cannot think of anything to say now that might bring that sound back.

He Tian lowers the photos. ‘I…’

‘It’s fine,’ says Guan Shan. ‘They’re…’

He Tian’s mind supplies him with a lot of things that those photos _are_ , but he doesn’t say any of them. He can’t. Not when Guan Shan is looking at them in He Tian’s hands like he is. There’s something in that expression that He Tian can’t make sense of.

Guan Shan’s voice is impossibly quiet: ‘It felt good to be in front of the camera,’ he tells him. Admits. He Tian realises suddenly that this is something he has thought for a long time, and has never been able to tell anyone. And he doesn’t know what it means that he’s telling him.

‘It made me feel… Special. Like he wanted to look at me all the time.’

‘You don’t look happy in them,’ He Tian says, carefully. He throws his cigarette out the window.

‘Not in those. By then it was… I didn’t want it anymore. Didn’t want him to do that. But I—I’d already told him I liked it. And I had liked it. So I couldn’t—make sense of why it felt different and—’

‘You don’t have to tell me.’

His gaze, when it meets He Tian’s, does not waver. ‘I do,’ he says. ‘I think I do.’

He Tian says, ‘Was it always like—that?’

‘Taking photos?’

‘No,’ He Tian says, shaking his head. ‘That rough.’

Guan Shan is frowning, looking at the pictures. ‘That was… Those are mild,’ he says. And he sounds confused.

He Tian’s heart, quietly, is splintering. He has never wanted to kill anyone before.

‘Sometimes it was… Sometimes I got off. And after he was usually—soft with me. But sometimes it was like I wasn’t there. Like I wasn’t—like he just wanted to do things and it didn’t matter if I was ready or if I wanted it. And sometimes there—there were others. He’d invite them over and just watch and they’d—’

‘Guan Shan,’ He Tian chokes out. _Please, stop. You don’t have to tell me but I think I don’t want to know more._

He Tian puts the photos down—doesn’t want to hold them anymore. He rolls on his side, pulls Guan Shan to him until he can press his cheek into Guan Shan’s shoulder blade, until he can kiss the soft skin of his back.

It doesn’t seem fair that they’ve had that, and now they have this.

‘They started paying him for me,’ Guan Shan tells him. He Tian can feel the vibration of his voice thrumming into him. ‘Weren’t paying me, so it was okay. It wasn’t illegal. And he’d give me money. It’s how it works.’

He Tian swallows. ‘He gives you your—your clientele? Doesn’t let you choose.’

‘There’s never been anything too…’

‘They beat you.’

‘They were drunk. I was… Not so willing. I kept—thinking about what you said.’

 _Are you going to realise that you’re more than just flesh and a hole to fuck?_ _Are you going to let anyone stick their cock in you if they pay enough?_

He Tian hears the words now, thrown back at them. Feels them like they must have felt to Guan Shan, arrows piercing, ceaseless.

‘I didn’t mean any of it.’

‘Yes, you did. And it was true.’

He reaches out a hand, brushes it across Guan Shan’s cheek. Guan Shan’s eyelashes flutter at the touch. He Tian lets his lips follow his fingers, brushing kisses into his skin, tilts his head around so He Tian can kiss the bones of his face, the lips that open for him.

‘I’m sorry,’ He Tian says, hushed. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘What for?’

‘Everything. For things I’ve done to you. For things I feel like I’ve done. I wish there was something I could do.’

Guan Shan sighs. ‘I don’t mind it too much. And he has too much against me. He can use me. I… let him.’

‘Because you have to.’

‘Because it’s easy to do what he says,’ Guan Shan corrects him. ‘His family is big. They’re wealthy. They have contacts through Shanghai. If I ran he’d hunt me.’

‘He wants you that much?’

‘He is—attached.’

‘Attached,’ says He Tian. He cannot think what that might mean. Cannot think how Guan Shan was on his knees before a man as a child. How, still, he kneels for him. ‘There must be something I could—’

‘Enough, He Tian,’ Guan Shan bites out, pulling away from him, propping himself on his arms. He Tian sits back up, cross-legged, spine curved, and stares at him. The light is glowing gold and slow through the gap in the blinds, and Guan Shan’s skin is crossed with rays, a patchwork of dawn light and shadows; he looks like he is made of gold.

‘There’s nothing you could do,’ Guan Shan says.

‘Does She Li know?’

Guan Shan’s eyes widen. ‘I don’t—I haven’t seen him since middle school. He went to high school in Beijing.’

‘Does he know?’ He Tian says again. Because that wasn’t an answer.

‘He Tian—’

‘He let him do that to you because you were that desperate for money—’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know. Why would anyone ever think that someone in their family could—’

‘You were his friend.’

‘Once,’ Guan Shan says. ‘Once.’

He Tian swallows. ‘And me?’

‘You?’ Guan Shan says, frowning up at him.

‘I wasn’t your friend.’

In his head he sees Guan Shan, younger, and with it every hit at him; every threat. Every touch He Tian wanted to make, hidden beneath something else. Guan Shan’s chest under his hands, tongue in his mouth like it could not help itself.

No. They were not friends. Not friends at all.

‘You weren’t,’ Guan Shan concedes, sitting up fully. Somehow, it pains He Tian to hear it on his tongue, but it is chased away as his mouth follows, pressing into He Tian’s chest, into the muscle of his arms, working his way up He Tian’s neck until his lips part with a rush of breath.

‘I think we could be friends,’ He Tian murmurs, head lolling as Guan Shan’s tongue swipes across the pulse in his throat. Feeling Guan Shan hot and in his arms, pushing himself against him, after a night of He Tian already, is enough to make He Tian start to ache, start to burn, slowly, like a furnace lighting up in some low part inside of him.

‘Friends?’ Guan Shan says. Smiling it into his skin. ‘I think that would be nice.’

‘I think it would be difficult.’

‘There’s no harm in trying,’ he says, pressing closer, closer, and He Tian lets him try.

* * *

Later, when Guan Shan is showering in the bathroom, steam curling beneath the doorway – He Tian imagines he can hear him singing to himself – He Tian finds his phone in his pocket.

‘Come join,’ Guan Shan had said, and He Tian had felt a smile tugging at his lips, Guan Shan’s fingers curling through his.

How freely that smile came now. How free He Tian felt.

‘After,’ he said. ‘If you let me touch you this much I might never stop.’

And so he watched Guan Shan leave, watched his ass, his long legs, the tight leanness of his waist. There was something dangerous about watching him move. A lazy confidence that Guan Shan did not seem to carry with him when he was clothed. There was nothing boyish about it: He Tian was dealing with a young man. The thought thrilled him.

And now he holds his phone in his hands.

 _Friends_ , he thinks. And then hear hears himself: _You hate me_. And Guan Shan: _No. But I would. If you did that._

‘Hello?’

He Tian swallows. ‘Zhengxi.’

‘He Tian?’

‘I need a favour.’

There’s a pause. ‘Anything.’

‘Your dad,’ he says carefully. ‘If I gave him evidence of a crime, could he make an arrest?’

The pause, this time, is even longer. ‘What have you done?’

‘It’s not me,’ he says. The shower is still running. Guan Shan’s mother will be home from her shift soon. The photos are on the floor again, fallen with the sheets during another moment of bursting heat, and He Tian does not want to have to look at them again. He is scared of how quickly he might be getting used to looking upon them.

He tells Zhengxi a careful mix of everything and nothing. Is this not, after all, what a friend would do?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted here: http://thefearofthetruth.tumblr.com/post/152170758324/hush-56


	6. Chapter 6

He Tian leaves cash on the dresser. It’s only when he’s halfway out the door that he realises what it—looks like. His heart pounds. He backs in, scribbles a note while he can hear Guan Shan moving about in the bathroom, the shower shutting off, and then he’s gone.

_Get something for us for dinner? You know I’m shit at cooking._

It’s already hot outside, and he thinks that there are months left of this burning heat before the chill of autumn creeps back in. He Tian isn’t sure how he’s going to stand it. He likes the cut of winter mornings; the mist of dark nights where the stars are burning in a cold kind of brightness. Shanghai summers are pressing, and thick, and they are, in a way He Tian has never felt before, exhausting.  

He showers when he gets home, the water biting, his bones seizing up, and finds himself a box of biscuits and some fruit to eat. His aching from the sex, and from the run, and it’s a good feeling that makes him want to stretch and stretch like a cat, muscles shuddering at the peak of it.

But he can’t linger. He has time to drink a glass of water and run a hand through his wet hair before he’s back out the door, and the sky is high and bright, and the streets are busy with school kids and people making their way to work.

He Tian should be one of them, but his last exam was yesterday, and there is nothing but the Closing Ceremony left. School feels like a lifetime ago. He can think only about what he has had the night before – what they have had together – and how separate it feels from everything else, pressed away in some small alcove of his life that he wants to make more room for. He wants it to be the centrepiece.

It is strange, too, that he is doing this in daylight. Some things, He Tian thinks, should be left for darkness, but he can’t stop himself.

He can’t stop because he thinks if he does he might not start again. He can’t stop because, probably, it would be a dangerous thing for him to lose momentum. He can’t stop because the difference between what is right and what he wants might change. For now, they feel like the same thing.

At one point, they were different: leaving Guan Shan to She Li because it felt right, or making him realise what a loss such a thing would be because he didn’t want Guan Shan to leave. And he realises himself now what a horror that first one would have been. Would he have been in the bar? A permanent fixture? Was He Tian’s encouragement to stay in education a permanent thing, locking Guan Shan in place with what he had already started?

He Tian doesn’t know. He doesn’t know enough, and certainly he doesn’t know what could have been. He knows, only, that there is something that he can do now, and he hopes it is not wrong.

The bar, like the last time he was there, is quiet and warm inside. There are the mean drunks on the bar stools; there are the college kids free for summer and the tourists eating American food at the tables and playing pool. And there is the bartender, too, cleaning the glasses.

How unchanging it all seems, and it unsettles He Tian: Guan Shan has been stuck here, in this immovable place, and it will not let him go as much as he cannot leave.

‘Where is he?’ He Tian says, walking up to the bar.

The guy’s look is withering, but there is something lingering in it too that He Tian can’t read. Fear, perhaps. Some kind of tentative intrigue, perhaps.  

‘Who?’ he says.

‘You know who.’

The barman puts down the glass, and leans his weight on his hands. ‘You’re going to lose,’ he says. ‘You don’t win this kind of thing. You’ll make it worse for him.’

‘Is he in there?’ He Tian says, head jerking towards the back of the place. There is a plain door fixed in the wall, and He Tian can’t see anywhere else for an office to go.

A muscle jumps in the guy’s jaw. He says, in a strange voice, ‘He’s busy.’

‘I’m sure he’ll make time,’ He Tian says, walking away.

‘You can’t just—’

But He Tian doesn’t want to listen to what he _can’t just_ do. That kind of imperative has never had much effect on him anyway, and for once he thinks it’s a good thing. But, perhaps, not for long:

The door is unlocked when he reaches it, and it is dark in there, so he thinks he’s got it wrong.

But there’s someone in the chair, behind the desk, and He Tian’s mind struggles to piece things together. It does not take long. The head, bobbing beneath the desk, the hazy gaze.

The man from the park looks at him, and it is only with a tender press of his hand that he moves the head away, that the boy rises to his feet.

For a while He Tian can only see the red hair – dyed, not the real thing – and the bruises on his face, the lean, pale frame. But he is a boy. Can’t be more than sixteen. And Guan Shan is at home. The boy looks too much like Guan Shan and also nothing like him at all, and it’s like He Tian has walked in on some strange, alternate reality. Like he has, for a moment, gone back to middle school. Like if he had walked in here four years ago he would have seen this image.

‘Leave us,’ the man says, a cool voice. It’s flat and sounds like nothing, but there is a haze to it, something distant and lustful. He rearranges himself in the seat, leaning back slightly.

The boy leaves, throwing He Tian a look full of spite as he passes. He Tian weathers the impact of his shoulder, bony and nothing that might have hurt him.  

The door clicks shut, and there is silence. In here, they can’t hear the music in the bar. They cannot hear the clink of glasses and the cheers from around the pool table and the tinny voices of commentators on the TV. Out there, they cannot hear shouting from in here. They cannot hear a moan or a guttural cry, a sharp intake of breath at a wandering hand and a low thrust.

There are no windows, and only a lamp is lit dimly on the large desk, which fills the room. There are bookshelves along the walls filled with files and finance binders, but otherwise it is sparse and oddly clinical and carries with it the suggestion that its owner, looking at He Tian now with a flat gaze, could leave now without having a trace of himself remaining.  

‘He Tian,’ the man says. There is no expression on his face, plain and maybe handsome if one looked hard enough. ‘I didn’t expect to see you so soon.’

He Tian could ask him how he knows his name. How he found out about him. Was it the barman? But he doesn’t. Instead he says: ‘I want you to leave him alone. I want you to stop—whatever you’re doing with him.’

His expression does not change. He says, ‘That’s nice.’

‘I’ll pay a year of whatever he’s making for you. I’ll pay whatever debt he owes you. But you will leave him alone. You won’t contact him. Ever.’

‘I won’t contact him,’ She Li’s says. His eyebrows have risen slightly. It’s the most emotional response He Tian has been given so far. ‘Why would I do any of that? You know a deal can only happen when both parties are— _satisfied._ ’

He Tian grits his teeth. ‘I said I’ll pay you. He doesn’t want you anymore.’

‘He doesn’t want me.’

‘Whatever—whatever sick shit you make him do—he’s done with it. It’s over.’

‘He Tian,’ he says, calmly, like He Tian is a child who struggles to comprehend truth. And then: ‘ _He_ came to _me_.’

There’s a moment of silence. ‘I don’t—’

‘God, he was young,’ he continues. He leans back further in his seat, hands folded neatly where his suit jacket is buttoned. His voice takes on a dream-like quality. ‘So pretty. He had these lips… He would look up at me through these eyelashes, and his eyes—they would burn. You’ve never seen that kind of look before.’

‘Stop it.’

‘He’d hate me as much as he loved me and that was—such a thing to behold. And I’d tell him to put his lips on me.’

‘Shut up.’

‘Just the tip, mind you. That mouth of his was so small. But he’d just slide right down until he _gagged_ —’

‘ _Shut the fuck up_.’

His eyes focus again, and there’s a spark in them. Nothing flat about that look. It’s sharp and knowing; it’s like putting a fingertip over a knife edge, and He Tian is already bleeding.

His fists are shaking at his sides, and he thinks that no one would hear this man’s skull fall in. But he stays where he is, on the other side of the desk. He Tian can see his hands, but he doesn’t know how quick he is to pull a gun or knife from a drawer or the underside of the desk, and He Tian doesn’t want to test it. He can’t. He needs to stay with this.

He can win this. He can.

‘How could I say no to something like that?’ the man says, quiet. ‘Who would turn that away? And I tried, you know. But he kept coming back. And I’d tell him to be quiet because Li Tze’s bedroom was only down the hall and—’

‘What. Do you want.’

He frowns. ‘What do I want? Well—nothing. You’re the one who wants something from me. Which puts me in the rather unique position of dictating the terms, don’t you think?’

He Tian can feel the blood rushing in his head, like raising a shell to his ear and hearing the sea, but this is a raging thing. Everything is shaking. Everything feels like it’s threatening to break, already splintering and cracking.

He knew it would be like this. He knew that anyone who could take those photos could say what he has said.

But to hear it—it’s a torment. And He Tian doesn’t know how long he can stand it.

‘Your terms, then,’ He Tian says. ‘Tell me.’

He blinks. ‘Oh, I didn’t—I don’t think I said I would be making any kind of deal with you, did I?’

‘If you don’t I’ll go to the police. Give them the photos. Tell them you gave them to me. There are cameras all through the People’s Park.’

She Li’s uncle is smiling as He Tian talks, a quiet thing. It’s like He Tian is putting on some sort of show for him; he wants to cut it out of him. It is so quiet in the room, the kind of strange quietness that makes people want to scream, just to fill it. He Tian wonders if anyone would hear.

‘You wouldn’t,’ the man says. ‘If you really wanted to you’d be there now rather than standing in my office telling me about what it is, apparently, that I _want_.’

‘Really?’

‘Really,’ he says, dry, amused that He Tian is trying to play his game. ‘And if not then you’d be there at least before you tried to fuck the boy.’ He tilts his head. ‘Unless…’

And He Tian says nothing.

‘Oh dear,’ the man says. ‘I think I thought your standards were higher than that. What was it like fucking someone that has been fucked by bigger ones than yours? Was he loose?’

‘That’s not going to work,’ He Tian says. ‘Not from you.’

He smiles, satisfied. ‘No, I suppose not.’

At no point does he get up, and it should change things: that He Tian is standing; that he is tall and could loom over him if he wanted to. That it would take He Tian less time to wrap his hands around his throat than it would for him to get around the desk to He Tian. But it doesn’t. The air is thick in here, and He Tian’s fingers are curling at his sides. A hand sneaks into his pocket, thumb running over the metal of his lighter. It’s an awful thing to be waiting on someone else’s words for once.

‘And I think you wouldn’t go to the police because we both know what sort of boy Guan Shan is. Could you imagine the look on that face if he found out you were here? If the police arrested him and questioned him and turned his life inside out? Because of you.’

‘Ruin his life,’ He Tian says, blankly, a question that is not really a question. He ignores that last bit: none of this is really because of him. ‘Not yours.’

‘You think I’m not prepared for a little shit like you to walk into my office and try and bring me down? I would congratulate you but it’s like you haven’t even tried.’

‘Is that why he’s doing it? Because of the photos? Because you’re blackmailing him.’

‘His college application should be going through processing right about now. I’d hate to have to throw a spanner in the works.’

‘He said you were attached to him. Does he—mean _nothing_ to you? Regardless of what—of everything else?’

It’s like, for a moment, he’s confused by He Tian’s words. It’s possibly the most genuine expression He Tian has seen on his face, but he cannot bring himself to trust it. ‘Of course he does. Do you think I would have given him all that I have if he didn’t?’

He Tian doesn’t want to think about what he has _given him_ , about the hold he thinks he has over Guan Shan. About how the man is turning it into some awful reciprocal _arrangement_ that is somehow polite and adult and suggests that Guan Shan has ever known what he has been getting involved with.

‘But you’ll ruin him anyway because you’re jealous. Because you’re possessive.’

‘Ruin him,’ he scoffs. ‘Please. I’d give him everything if he didn’t get to college. Just like I always have. You speak to me as if everything you’re saying about me isn’t an immediate reflection of yourself.’

He Tian is revolted. ‘We’re _nothing_ alike—’

‘No?’ he cuts through. His eyes are narrowed, and his voice takes on an edge to it like wire. He’s not playing anymore, not eager to play games and speak in hypotheticals. ‘You don’t want him all for yourself? Where were you when his father was sent away and his mother could barely pay for a full meal, hm? Riding in on your white horse is rather convenient for you _now_ , isn’t it? All that hard part of looking after a child has been taken care of.’

‘Looking after a child,’ He Tian says. ‘Can you fucking hear yourself?’

‘Oh, there was always more than just sex, He Tian. He idolised me. When some boy had forced themselves onto him when he was fifteen, whose door was it that he came to at three o’clock in the morning, hm? Who was the one picking up the pieces when everyone else was just as cruel as everything I have ever been?’

‘I was fifteen,’ He Tian says. He hates that this man knows about that. Hates that Guan Shan has divulged other things to him that He Tian might not know, like has been stealing secrets from him. ‘I was stupid enough to do things to people that weren’t nice and to learn from it. You’re—you don’t have that liberty. You don’t get to have that as an excuse. You took advantage of him when he—’

‘When he needed _someone_. Exactly.’    

He Tian is shaking his head. He can’t—he knows the man is wrong. He knows it. But the way he’s looking at He Tian with the vague pity of someone who knows more, and the way he’s talking to him like everything he’s been thinking has not quite been understood… It’s enough for He Tian to almost believe it. That he brought it on Guan Shan. That he drove him to this plain man in his neat suit who no one, ever, would look twice at. And wasn’t that exactly the point?

‘Don’t give up so soon, He Tian,’ he says. His elbows are on the desk, hands clasped loose. They are young hands, and for some reason that makes He Tian hate him more. He’s watching He Tian with a perverse kind of attention. ‘I haven’t told you what I _wanted_ , have I?’

He Tian lets his eyes focus back on him. ‘Tell me,’ he says.

And the man says, ‘Come here.’

He Tian—hesitates.

There’s an edge to the man’s tone. Something He Tian doesn’t know how to handle. Something new. The room is slowly rearranging itself around that command, and He Tian can only think about Guan Shan. He can only think about what he’s doing this for—who he’s doing this for.

He walks towards him, or rather, he can feel himself moving. His limbs aren’t stilted like he thinks they should be. And the sureness of it makes him wishes he felt surer of himself.

He stops when he’s next to the chair, on the other side of the desk, and the man turns in his chair until he’s leaning back, looking up at He Tian. His eyes run over him in a way that’s almost cursory – perfunctory. Like he’s sizing him up for a suit fitting.

This close, He Tian can see that the man’s eyes are light, almost amber, and the shadowed lamplight makes him look wolfish. This close, He Tian can seen the hard outline of the man’s cock against his black trousers.

‘That’s right,’ he says, low. ‘Give me this, and you’ll have him.’

‘That’s not what this is about. It’s not about _having_ him. I just want him not to be with you.’

‘And isn’t this all very poetic? Starting and ending with sex? I sense there is some justice about it.’

He Tian can only hear himself speaking: ‘You said it wasn’t about sex with him.’

And he smiles. Says nothing.

‘Once,’ He Tian says. ‘And you don’t contact him ever.’

‘Oh, you’re considering it?’ he asks He Tian. ‘I thought you had more pride, He Tian.’

‘Giving someone a blowjob for something else doesn’t really come down to pride.’

‘I suppose,’ he says. ‘If you really want to think of it like that.’

‘I do.’ He Tian makes himself step forward, until his legs are pressing against his knees. ‘Are you agreeing then? I give you this once. And you leave him alone.’

He says, ‘I’ve never had someone as old as you. Or someone quite so… large. I suppose it’s rather like taming a beast.’

He Tian thinks there is some irony that the man will let He Tian put his jaw around his cock if he wants to stick with the analogy, but he doesn’t say it. He wants an answer. He wants to ask, too, how he’ll know that the man will keep his word. But to that question he knows his answer: _You don’t._ He wonders if that matters.

‘Fine,’ the man sighs. ‘You’d better have a fucking good mouth on you.’

He reaches up, hand on He Tian’s shoulder. There’s a shock of strength as he pushes He Tian onto his knees with a thud, a practiced push. The carpet is not soft on his knees, and He Tian can only think how he is taking the place of another. Taking the place of however many more.

‘No hands,’ he says. ‘You’ll use your mouth the whole time.’

He Tian stares up at him. ‘That will take fucking ages.’ But he takes hold of a wrist and leaves his hands behind his back.

‘I’ve got time.’

It’s ten minutes before He Tian has the length of him out of his trousers, zip pulled down with his teeth. His head is static while he does it. He can’t really see what he’s doing, or rather he can’t understand what he’s doing enough for it to make some sense. The heaviness in his mouth is strangely foreign to him.

He was kneeling for Guan Shan the night before, and it’s strange, too, how different it feels. There is a hand on the back of his head, and He Tian doesn’t want the touch like he did then. Everything about last night is lost; He Tian can hear the wet sound his mouth makes as it moves; he can hear the man’s low breathing, not hidden by music or sounds from the kitchens like he is wishing it was. His jaw is starting to ache. The carpet is still not soft.

He Tian doesn’t want it.

Perhaps he is starting to understand.

He doesn’t tell He Tian what to do. Doesn’t hit him like He Tian thinks he has probably done to others. The hand in his hair doesn’t leave. It seems to last an eternity when things change.

‘That’s it,’ he says quiet.

He is moving more, hips shifting, pushing more, and He Tian’s nails are biting into his wrist as his cheeks hollow.

And then suddenly He Tian feels the hot strip of it down the back of his throat.

And the man says, ‘Swallow,’ holding his head down, and He Tian—instinct—struggles against him. Puts his hands on the arms of the chair and tries to pull himself off but the hands are too strong on his head. ‘ _Swallow_ ,’ he says again, breathy and hard, like he’s holding He Tian under water.

He Tian swallows—chokes on it—can’t breathe can’t—

He is letting He Tian up for air at last; lets him cough and wipe the back of his hand across his mouth, and he realises that he is shaking, that there is water running from his eyes. His lower lip is shaking, and he bites it until the taste of blood replaces the taste of everything else.

‘Good,’ She Li’s uncle says, voice thick with satisfaction, and something’s not—something can’t be right. He Tian almost wants to thank him.

He Tian pulls himself to his feet and steps back; steps away. For a minute, his vision sways. He makes himself breathe. Waits to come back to himself in slow increments like the unfurling of a a rolled up map. And the parts of him that are rivers and lakes and oceans take longer to come back than the parts of land – the mountains and hardened deserts.

‘Five years younger,’ the man says, wistful. He is looking at He Tian like he’s missed out on something. ‘What a thing you would have been.’

‘Are you going to pay me?’ He Tian says. He hates that his voice sounds like it does.

There’s silence. For a few seconds. And then the man starts to laugh, low chuckling, delighted by some sort of private joke.

‘All right,’ he says eventually, a smile skirting the edges of his lips. ‘I’ll pay you for your _services._ ’

He pulls open one of the desk drawers, and rips open a bag of petty cash.

‘Hand out,’ he says.

He Tian puts his hand out. The man, slowly, picks out a one jiao coin, an aluminium thing with peony blossoms on it. It is tiny and cold when he puts it in He Tian’s upraised palm, and the weight of it is a weight of nothingness.

‘There you go,’ he says.

He Tian looks at it. _They started paying him for me. Weren’t paying me, so it was okay. It wasn’t illegal. And he’d give me money._ He Tian hears Guan Shan’s words, and thinks how funny it is that he heard them only as night was turning into a new day. He says, ‘That was… quite stupid.’

They don’t move. They don’t speak.

He Tian can’t believe how easy it has been. The man looks like he doesn’t want to believe it.

‘You wouldn’t,’ the man says, slowly.

He Tian stares at him. ‘I’m afraid I would,’ he says. He unclips the microphone from the inside of his t-shirt. ‘I might not fuck up Guan Shan’s life to fuck up yours. Don’t think I’m not willing to do it to mine.’

His face is ashen. He is, slowly, raising to his feet. He Tian hadn’t noticed his height before; he’s as tall as He Tian, not as broad, but he makes He Tian feel oddly small.

‘He’s worth _nothing_.’

‘No,’ He Tian says. Ironically, the room is not soundproof enough to block out the trill of a siren out on the street. ‘We both know he’s not. I suppose the difference is that I want _him_ to know he’s not too.’

* * *

The police question him. Really, it could have gone a lot worse, but Zhengxi’s dad is remarkable like his son, so everything is processed with a strange calmness and a focus that is a little nerve-wracking.

He has to go to the station in a separate car. They put him in a room and get him a coffee and ask him if he’s okay. If it was the first time. If he’s done anything else. He Tian has to explain things without really explaining things; he spins the coin between his fingers.

When they ask about the photos that they find in the man’s office drawers, He Tian says he doesn’t recognise any of them. He’d only been there once before.

They can’t understand why he was there; why a young man with a good family and a bright future was on his knees, and He Tian doesn’t know how to tell them that it wasn’t like any of that at all. That wasn’t a _side job_.

They are talking to him, he realises, as the afternoon wears on, like he is Guan Shan.

‘The photos in his office show kids younger than fourteen,’ Zhengxi’s dad tells him, when he’s getting him to fill out paperwork and tells him he can leave now. ‘We’ve interviewed the guy behind the bar. Apparently you’re not the youngest or the first. It’s like he wasn’t even careful. Didn’t try to hide anything.’

_You think I’m not prepared for a little shit like you to walk into my office and try and bring me down?_

He Tian hears the question in his head again and again, and thinks how strange it is. And then he remembers the barman’s words. _You’re going to lose. You don’t win this kind of thing. You’ll make it worse for him._ And then he thinks that maybe it’s not strange at all. ****

‘Can I go now?’ he says. The office had no windows; the glass in the police car was glazed. In here there is artificial strip lighting and bad coffee in styrofoam cups, and everything smells of stale cigarettes and the sweat patches of button-up shirts.

Zhengxi’s dad is giving him a long, searching look. They’re in a room for Talking. Not for Questioning. The seats are uncomfortable, stuffing coming out at the seams. Zhengxi’s dad should know that he’s not going to find something if he keeps looking at him.

‘Sure, kid,’ he says. And then he winces. ‘You’ve got my card if you need anything. I’ll make sure the team bother you as little as possible.’

‘Do you think he’ll be tried?’

Zhengxi’s father sighs. ‘Hard to say. He should be based on what we’ve found since. I’ll do my best.’

He Tian nods. There’s nothing he can do now. He has to think that it’s all been enough.

* * *

It’s dark when he gets back to his apartment. A whole day has fallen away and it feels like both an eternity and a messy handful of seconds has passed, scrabbling to catch the minutes that slip between fingers.

The hallway is silent as a tomb, and the press of his shoes into the marble floor and the metal slide of the elevator door is stark and echoing

At first he thinks it’s Wenling, sitting at his door, but the red hair is a shock of familiarity, and she would never wear that many clothes like she was trying to hide something.

Guan Shan scrambles to his feet when He Tian walks up to him, and they stare at each other.

He Tian doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say.

‘I made dinner,’ Guan Shan says, and He Tian realises he’s holding a Tupperware container and the smell of something familiar is lingering. His stomach growls in response; he thinks that he’s only had coffee and something else on his tongue today and he feels sick. ‘I thought you were going to come over so I…’

‘I was,’ He Tian said. His voice sounds scratchy and dry. ‘I got caught up with something. But—come in.’

They go inside, toeing off their shoes, and He Tian leaves the lights off except for those beneath the kitchen counters, dim and glowing like skyscraper lights. Everything is quiet and trapped into itself, but He Tian suddenly hates how open the windows are. How it always felt like he had some unique monopoly over the city, looking out onto it like a fish bowl. How it feels, for the first time, like someone is looking in.

He turns the TV on, flicks to the news. He watches it, for a while, and then Guan Shan must look over, because he drops a glass in the kitchen. There is the crunch of shards as he comes over; He Tian will have to stitch him up later; clean the blood of the floor. He comes to a stop next to He Tian—neither of them sit—and watches.

The man’s face is not instantly recognisable; the camera makes him look older. But his family’s name is plastered across the headline, and the bar is a backdrop behind the reporter.

They watch, and He Tian feels only the smallest bit of satisfaction.

‘What did you do?’ He Tian hears. When he glances, Guan Shan is staring at him in a way that He Tian can’t make sense of. Horror? Euphoria? Some strange, uncertain mix of the two? Some unwillingness to hope and a hatred that it might be possible.

‘Nothing,’ He Tian says. ‘He probably brought it on himself.’

Guan Shan does not stop looking at him.

 _No,_ He Tian wants to tell him. _Don’t look at me like that. I wanted to save you but I don’t want you to know it. I don’t want you to feel like you’re saved, but I…_

And he’s stuck: because he has to wonder if he did it so Guan Shan would know. He has to wonder if he did it so he could morph into another version of that man where Guan Shan is, at once, immediately indebted to someone else.

 _You don’t want him all to yourself?_ the man had said. He Tian can hear it now, the shivering accusation. He Tian has to wonder if is true. He hopes there is a difference, and he hopes more that Guan Shan can see it.

He thinks the difference is that if Guan Shan doesn’t want him, then he would never make him stay.

But then he hears that small voice, again, sliding down the back of his head: _He came to me._

How will he know if Guan Shan wants him; how will Guan Shan know if he wants He Tian?

He Tian turns back to stare at the TV. There are censored pictures on the screen, barely discernible; the reporter’s voice is a hazy narration. Guan Shan beside him, is stiff.

‘There weren’t any photos of you,’ He Tian tells him.

‘You said you didn’t do anything.’

Getting on his knees for one jiao is doing nothing, but he doesn’t tell Guan Shan this. For all the millions of yuan that he has spent on boys, He Tian cannot help but note the remarkable irony that a small coin was all it took, because payment is still payment. Instead, he reaches out his hand, and slips his fingers through Guan Shan’s. His palm is warm, and it feels small in He Tian’s hand.

‘What do I do now?’ Guan Shan says, small, distant. He is not really there, and He Tian knows there will be moments where he will have to bring Guan Shan back. ‘I’ve got—I need—My college—’

He Tian’s honest, and says, ‘I don’t know.’ But he is also honest when he says, ‘But I’m always here for you. If you want.’

Guan Shan says nothing. But, slowly, his fingers lock into his, and that is enough.


End file.
